Dhaka, Jan 21 (IANS) Missing luggage trolleys at Dhaka airport in Bangladesh are not only an operational failure but exposes a governance system which makes excuses, has poor accountability, and is allergic to fixing the real problem. Luggage trolley crisis at the Dhaka airport is not only an operational failure but a national parable, a report has highlighted.

Passengers who arrive at Dhaka airport now have to find a trolley for one to two hours, showcasing failures, excuses of the authorities and symbolic solutions that would make any student of public administration weep with recognition, Zakir Kibria, a Bangladeshi writer, policy analyst and entrepreneur, wrote in The Business Standard.

The authorities have said that there is no actual shortage. Group Captain Ragib Samad, who is in charge of trolley operations at Dhaka airport, stated that system is well stocked with nearly 3,700 trolleys across arrivals and departures. The problem is passengers, who are using the trolleys incorrectly, keeping them for too long while waiting for their luggage at the baggage belt at the airport.

"This is the first tenet of our allegory: the problem is never a lack of resources, but the public's inability to use them properly. The state provides; the people mismanage. If only passengers would levitate their luggage, the system would function flawlessly. Why is this year so special? Here is where the allegory deepens into pure poetry. The trolley crisis stems from flight congestion. The congestion stems from winter fog. The fog is a problem because the Instrument Landing System (ILS) has been downgraded," the report in The Business Standard highlighted.

The ILS was downgraded as runway lights were damaged by a Thai Airways aircraft in October last year, the newspaper cited. The lights could not be repaired immediately as the parts must be imported through a tender process. A single incident months ago causes a domino effect, with each pointing to the prior link. The Civil Aviation Authority is responsible for broken lights and not for trolleys.

"Bangladesh's trolley problem is far more nuanced. Here, the trolleys are not running at all. The levers of state machinery — tenders, procedures, departmental jurisdictions — are so stiff from disuse that by the time anyone decides to pull one, a dozen flights have already diverted to Kolkata and 500 passengers are sleeping on their suitcases," the A Business Standard report detailed.

The passengers will suffer and authorities will blame fog, flights and people's lack of trolley-return etiquette for the crisis.

"The luggage trolley crisis is not merely an operational failure; it is a national parable. It teaches us that a system can be fully stocked with hardware yet starved of efficient coordination and proactive maintenance. It shows how accountability can be diffused across so many agencies that it evaporates entirely. And it proves that the most hilarious, frustrating op-ed material is not written by satirists — it is lived daily by citizens, one delayed flight and one missing trolley at a time. The trolleys have left the building. The allegory, however, is here to stay," wrote Kibria.

--IANS

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