Staff Reporter:
A total of 90% people are forced to provide excessive fare multiple times than the regular fare, speakers at a seminar said on Monday.
“The government announces strict measures to stop the collection of extra fare on Eid every year, it holds a preparation meeting with the profit shareholders of the extra fare,” said general secretary of the organization, Md Mozammel Haque Chowdhury while speaking at a seminar on the title of ‘Civil society expresses concern over anarchy in public transport fare and road accident every year during Eid, held at Dhaka Reporters Unity (DRU) on Monday.
Speakers from Bangladesh Jatri Kalyan Samity also urged the authorities concerned to take effective measures in reducing passenger harassment, excessive fare from the passengers and road accidents ahead of Eid-ul-Azha.
They also demanded hundred percent implementation of the order to ensure safe and uninterrupted road communications across the country by the ministry and officers concerned, to make the Transport and Workers Association responsible, stop extortion on the road and movement of unfit vehicles.
“Although the regulator organization, transport owners and labor organizations have been given the re-sponsibility to stop the collection of excessive fares, they all run the fare anarchy in accordance with the others,” he said.
The regulatory body, the leaders of transport owners and labor organizations were tasked to monitor col-lection of excess fare, to stop the movement of unfit vehicles, but actually 90% passengers have to pro-vide double to triple fare during eid journey, he claimed.
Besides, the authorities concerned of Bangladesh Road Transport Authority (BRTA) directed the transport workers to pay the fare of the last destination despite stopping charging extra fare from passen-gers.
As a result, the low-income people travelled to the roof of the bus, open trucks due to charging of exces-sive fare, he said.
Besides, those who benefited by the movement of unauthorized three-wheelers, were given responsibility to stop movement of such vehicles.
As a result, road accidents, chaos in transportation, harassment in people’s movement and excessive fare is increasing in phases ahead of each Eid, said the general secretary of the Jatri Kalyan Samity.
He claimed that the government’s image is being seriously questioned due to chaos in transport and road accidents, although the government has improved the road infrastructure by spending several crores of money.
