DU Correspondent :
Mohiuddin Roni, a Dhaka University (DU) student, along with a group of students brought out a long march program carrying anti-corruption placards on Tuesday from Kamalapur Railway Station to Rail Bhaban demanding end of the corruption and mismanagement in Bangladesh Railway.
The fourth-year student of the Theater and Performance Studies Department has also given a memorandum of six-point demands to the Railway director general after passing 12 days of sit-in protest.
After receiving the memorandum, Railway Director General Dhirendra Nath Mazumder assured and said, “I have read the six points. He writes well. We agree with the six
resolve the weak points that we have, so that passengers can travel smoothly and gracefully.”
“The weakness of the Railway is that it does not have own IT centre. A total of 26 thousand to 30 thousand tickets are sold from Dhaka every day. It was seen that sometimes 3 lakh, 4 lakh and even 10 lakh people want to buy tickets, but we can’t give so many. We are trying to resolve these,” Dhirendra Nath Mazumder said.
Moreover, Mohiuddin Roni could not be satisfied with Railway Director General’s assurance. He yelled to continue the sit-in protest stressing 48 hours ultimatum and sought the intervention of the Prime Minister of its concern.
Besides, Mohiuddin Roni has been staging a sit-in protest since 7 July at Kamalapur Railway Station against the mismanagement and corruption of Bangladesh Railway and conducted a mass signature campaign at the station on July 7. He even spent the Eid day at the station.
“Since the introduction of e-ticketing services in Bangladesh Railways, it has been seen that some brokers with the help of some railway employees are creating an artificial crisis by buying more tickets for intercity trains. For which, people have to suffer collecting tickets,” he said in the memorandum.
“Most of the time it is seen that the tickets are sold out as soon as they are released at online. As a result, passengers have to wait in queues for hours or forced to buy tickets at additional prices from black market,” he added.
The six points demands are Harassment of passengers by Sahaj.com in selling tickets must be stopped immediately, the black market of tickets must be prevented, the online quota for booking of tickets must be stopped and equal opportunities should be ensured for online-offline ticket purchases, A long-term plan should be adopted for the development of the railway infrastructure along with the increase in the number of trains according with the demand, the performance of train ticket inspectors and supervisors along with other officials should be continuously monitored and the quality of railway services should be enhanced by building strong information systems, food should be sold in trains at fair prices, free supply of clean water and sanitary sanitation should be ensured.
