Millions of people are leaving the capital to spend Eid holidays with their families in mostly villages and small townships.
With Eid holidays already starting Tuesday, huge number of people were seen traveling to their village homes on roads, trains and by riverine routes.
Monday was the last working day for government employees before Eid-ul-Azha. Private institutions, banks, insurance, stock market and financial institutions were closed from Tuesday.
The railway authorities said that there may be such an on rush of passengers till the day before Eid. Strict measures have taken to penalize anyone traveling on train without tickets. No passenger can enter the station area without producing a valid ticket.
The railway authority has started selling advance tickets for inter-city trains from last June 14. As per railway plan, June 24 tickets are issued on June 14. Similarly, advance tickets for June 25 are given on June 15, June 26 on June 16, June 17 for June 27 and June 28 are
given on June 18.
The railway authorities sold all advance tickets before Eid-ul-Azhar festival online. And return advance train tickets for Eid trip started from June 22. Accordingly, tickets for July 2 were given on June 22. The return train tickets are given on 23rd June for 3rd July, 24th June for 4th July, 25th June for 5th July and 26th June for 6th July respectively.
About 60,000 people will leave Dhaka by train for different destinations on Eid-ul-Azha. A total of 52 pairs of local-intercity trains will run from Kamalapur station. There is also a pair of Eid special trains. And two more pairs of Eid special trains will run from the airport station on the 27th of June (today).
In some cases, even though the train reached the terminal before reaching the station, the passengers expressed their anger at the delay of the early train of the day. Apart from this, no complaints have been received from the passengers on this Eid journey so far.
This year too, an additional 25 percent of the total seat capacity will be sold for passengers traveling standing. These tickets are available from Dhaka, Dhaka Cantonment, Airport and Joydevpur Station. Only unseated tickets can be purchased from the station counters on the day of departure. This time, about 29,000 seat tickets will be sold daily on the intercity train from Dhaka to Eid journey.
Meanwhile, there is no pressure of passengers in the launch as before. The launch employees are not too busy. However, the launch officials said that there is a possibility of increasing the pressure from evening onwards. On Tuesday (June 27) morning, the Sadarghat launch terminal was visited, and a row of launches were blocked in the terminal's Paltunen.
According to the sources of BIWTA's Safety and Traffic Management Department, Dhaka River Port Office, 27 launches left for the southern region from 12:00 pm to 9:00 am on Tuesday and 46 launches arrived at the terminals from different terminals.
Besides, 39 launches have arrived at Sadarghat terminal from the southern region. Passengers are seen in 2-3 launches but there is no additional pressure on the passengers. Due to lack of passenger pressure, the launch is not leaving at the scheduled time, the passengers are suffering due to this.
Police, Ansar and other members of the law and order force are engaged in the security of the passengers. Security has been strengthened from the control room of the Naval Police at Sadarghat Terminal so that there is no inconvenience to the people at home, the policemen are active.
Meanwhile, the pressure of homebound passengers has increased since Monday. People at home are suffering because of this. Additional fares are being charged on vehicles.
Passengers have complained of being charged double fares at some destinations. In the morning, there was pressure on the vehicles that were traveling from Mahakhali to North Bengal. Airport, Abdullahpur and Chandra areas are moving at a standstill due to traffic pressure. Passengers complain that transporters are charging twice the fare than the previous fare. Police is not taking any action.
Traffic pressure has tremendously increased in Narayanganj section of Dhaka-Chittagong highway. During the night, the Dhaka-Chittagong highway suffered stop-and-go traffic jams at some places. However, before morning, the entire highway became empty. So far, there has been no traffic jam anywhere.
Meanwhile, the bus owners have been accused of charging more than the fixed fare. The passenger named Amir Hossain said that the bus ticket has not been found yet. Waiting for the bus in the rain soaked highway. Despite the pressure of passengers, it was not difficult to get a bus ticket at a higher fare.
Besides, Community Police, Mobile Team, Honda Team, Ambulance Team will be engaged on the highway 24 hours. Also, under the direction of Superintendent of Police of Gazipur Region, Mostafizur Rahman, two wreckers have been kept ready at Shimrail intersection and Madanpur area of Dhaka-Chittagong highway and one wrecker at Dhaka-Sylhet highway to quickly remove the accident vehicles from the highway in case of any road accident.
He also said that authority are working tirelessly to resolve the traffic jam. Hopefully, this time, compared to other times, the homebound people will be able to reach their destination safely and easily without any suffering. We will take legal action if we receive complaints about overcharging.