A terrible gridlock brought immense sufferings for the home-goers who were going by buses to their village homes to celebrate the Eid-ul-Azha with their near and dear ones in northern and southern districts of the country.
Train accidents that occurred due to travelling of passengers on roofs led to death of eight home-goers, sources said.
Md Hossain Rana, a private bank official, had been waiting since Saturday morning for his fixed bus of National Paribahan to go to his village home in Rajshahi.
Talking to the FE Saturday at 5.0pm he said that in his eight years of Dhaka life, he never experienced a hassle like this.
He was passing an awful time along with his wife and infant child.
Most of the home goers who began journey to their villages and hometowns to celebrate the festival with families faced an immense suffering caused by a gridlock of nearly 75 kilometres.
The worst sufferers were those who were on the way towards north-Bengal and south-Bengal -- Rangpur-Rajshahi divisions and Khulna division.
Shortage of food, water and sanitation facilities made their journey terrible, especifically for women.
Our Tangail correspondent writes: Since Saturday morning hundreds of passenger buses and cattle carrying trucks remained inert on both sides of the highway starting from Nandan Park at Kaliakoir of Gazipur to Elenga of Tangail.
The 75 kilometres traffic jam on the busy Dhaka-Tangail highway has been causing immense suffering to homebound people two days ahead of the festival, he said.
He said many women and children were forced to leave their buses and go to nearby houses beside the highway for sanitation.
Thousands of homebound people were suffering from lack of water and food.
Considering the movement of the vehicles, which were almost stand-still, the inhabitants whose houses were in Tangail, left the buses and began to go on foot even though the distance was 10 kilometres to 15 kilometres.
According to the Bus-Truck, Motor Owners Association, nearly 22,000 vehicles in 21 routes ply on Dhaka-North-Bengal and Dhaka South-Bengal highways, but during the Eid festival, the number of vehicles increases three to four times.
That causes the gridlock, the Association office said.
Bangladesh Railway (BR) officials said they were facing hardship to carry the large numbers of extra passengers during Eid.
Our sources at Bogra and Tangail said, at least eight people died after falling off the roofs of two trains in Bogra and Tangail on Friday night and Saturday.
They were going to their village homes to observe the festival with their families. After failing to collect tickets they were forced to climb on the train roof.
In Bogra, four passengers riding on the roof of Ekota Express (Dhaka-Dinajpur) were hit by an iron structure of Halhaliya Bridge at Adamdighi in Santahar upazila of Bogra district Saturday noon, they said.
Four people died and three were injured after falling off the roof of a moving train in Mirzapur upazila in Tangail district Friday night, sources said.
Officials at Kamalapur rail station told the FE that against its capacity of issuing around 12,000 tickets a day, the station faced demand for several thousand tickets every hour nowadays.
According to BR, 278 trains run throughout the country carrying about 30,000 passengers daily and every year it carries three to four times more passengers during the Eid period using its maximum capacity.
On visiting the Sadarghat (Dhaka launch terminal) area the FE correspondent found every launch was overloaded with a large number of passengers.
The launches were delaying for hours to leave towards the costal regions, passengers claimed.
Rashedul Karim and his family had been waiting for nearly six hours at Sadarghat to go to his home in Barguna district by MV Salauddin Launch on Saturday.
Talking to the FE he said, the authority was not responding to their query on the time when the launch would leave.
He said the launches are carrying three to four times more passengers than usual.
He said he had been waiting for five hours but his fixed launch was yet to come.
A high official of Bangladesh Inland Water Transport Authority (BIWTA) said the capacity of the water transports for Barisal and other coastal regions is nearly 40000 passengers per day.
But nearly 0.2 million people are thronging the launch terminals before Eid and launch numbers have also been increased, he said.
Source: thefinancialexpress-bd.com
Read More on prothom alo dhaka
No comments:
Post a Comment