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The Cabinet on Wednesday approved in principle the draft of Road Transport (Amendment) Act, 2024, reducing penalties, mostly pecuniary ones, for a good number of offences as well as making offences under two more clauses as bailable ones.
The approval came from the cabinet meeting chaired by Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina at her office in Dhaka city.
“The penalties for offences in 12 clauses have been changed in the proposed law,” said Cabinet Secretary Mahbub Hossain while briefing reporters at the Bangladesh Secretariat.
Besides, crimes under two more clauses (84 and 98), which are now non-bailable, have been made bailable offences, keeping crimes under only the single clause (105) of the law have been kept as non-bailable ones in the draft law, he said.
The existing Road Transport Act 2018 is being amended in line with the recommendations of the National Road Safety Council, he added.
According to the draft law, crimes related to serious injuries or killing (under clause 105) of a man caused by motor- vehicle driving would be treated as non-bailable offences.
The crimes for violation of directives related to technical specification and arrangement (under clause 84) and the offences related to loss of lives and properties caused by driving with over-speed, overloading, risky overtaking or without control would be considered as bailable crimes.
The 12 clauses where the penalties have been changed are 69, 70, 71, 80, 81, 85, 86, 88, 89, 90, 92 and 98.
The cabinet also cleared the draft of the International Mother Language Institute (Amendment) Act, 2024 in a bid to create a trust fund to conduct research on near-extinct mother tongues, movements related to Bengali or other languages in the world.
Besides, the cabinet cleared the drafts of Christian Religious Welfare Trust (Amendment) Act, 2024, Hindu Religious Welfare Trust (Amendment) Act, 2024 and Buddhist Religious Welfare Trust (Amendment) Act, 2024.
“In the draft laws, no major change was brought. The post of secretary (chief executive) was renamed as executive director,” said the Cabinet Secretary.