MOST city people have been peripatetic due to their desire to celebrate the Eid festival with their families in the countryside. The rush of the crowds to the city bus, train and launch terminals are almost endless with and the atmosphere commingles with a sense of desperation and hope to make the way home. Most passengers are paying extra charges, even twice as much to buy a ticket. Extortionists and toll collectors are forcing transport operators to pay and they are passing it on the passengers in the form of higher price of ticket. Law enforcers are sitting almost idle and they are reported to have an indirect hand behind raising the toll.
We welcome the Eid-ul-Fitr to every home in Bangladesh and hope it will bring joy and happiness to family members who come from different cities and towns to celebrate the Eid together and share family bonds. It is part of our tradition and the occasion is also an emotionally charged moment. But we are also concerned on this occasion about the safe journey of the homebound passengers and their return journey to workplaces in the city or towns. The concern arises out of the bad road condition on the highways and in the countryside. The suffering begins from the city exit points like Saidabad or Gabtoli and continues all the way. The roads are highly vulnerable with broken surfaces, open potholes or brick works which have the potential to create accidents, which are very frequent on such occasions. Secondly, the hartal programme that the Jamaat-e-lslami scheduled for August 13 and 14 has added further to this list of concerns. Any obstacle to the movement of the Eid passengers back to their work place will not only be risky to their lives but may also add extra pressure on the law enforcing agencies to make the way safe. Inter-districts transport do not ply on roads during hartal programmes and it means people may get stuck up and spend more days at home to avoid risks. Thus more days of work stoppage may be added to the Eid holiday this time.
As we see, trains are running with passengers crowding on the roof top. Buses are running overloaded on inter-districts highways while many poor people are taking journey in open trucks. Most river launches are also running overcrowded and are prone to risks and accidents. We hope that the government will make sure that buses and trains are not carrying extra passengers and launches are following safety standards and foremost of all, will avoid running extra passengers. Nobody pays heed to these things until some mishaps take place and it is therefore the responsibility of the government to enforce all highway laws and such rules to protect people from accidents. We wish a joyous and heartfelt Eid Mubarak to every person and family and a safe journey to all.