Staff Reporter :
The public suffering mounted as the 48-hour transport strike continued for the second consecutive day on Monday enforced by the Bangladesh Road Transport Workers Federation to press home their 8-point demand.
No vehicles, including buses, minibuses and human haulers, were seen on the roads and streets through out the country during the strike.
The ongoing strike will end at 6:00am today (Tuesday ) morning and an 96-hour fresh strike is likely to be observed in November if their demand is regarded, transport leaders sources said.
On Saturday, the transport workers declared that they would abstain from work from 6:00am Sunday to press home their eight-point demand. In Dhaka, many people were seen walking or using rickshaws to reach their destinations, sometimes paying double or triple of the usual fare. There are also complaints that ridesharing apps also hiked their fares significantly.
No buses were available other than the state-run Bangladesh Road Transport Commission (BRTC) bus service.
Many of the office goers and students had to walk to their destinations. Rickshaws continued to dominate the city roads for the second day with drivers of CNG-run auto-rickshaws charging extra fare. Of the buses, only those of government-run BRTC service operated in the capital.
Meanwhile, students of University of Dhaka under the banner for “General Students” on Monday formed a human chain on the base of Raju sculpture protesting the transport strike that is causing immense sufferings to general people.
People in Chattogram are also facing difficulties due to the lack of public transports in metropolitan areas.
We are now mulling a 96-hour strike next month, said Osman Ali, General Secretary of Bangladesh Road Transport Workers Federation.
Meanwhile, Bangladesh Jatri Kalyan Samity (JKS) has urged the transport workers to call off their strike to end public sufferings.
JKS Secretary General Mozammel Haque Chowdhury on Monday came up with the request in a statement, reports media.
Mozammel Haque urged them to resolve their problem through talks with the authorities concerned instead of creating sufferings for the people.
The demands include making of all offences under the Road Transport Act “bailable”, cancellation of the provision that allows a worker to be fined Tk 5 lakh for involvement in a road accident, lowering the minimum educational qualification required to obtain driving licences from class-VIII to class-V, and ending harassment by police on roads.
Earlier on September 19, the Parliament passed the much-anticipated Road Transport Act-2018 amid criticisms over lenient punishments for deaths caused by reckless driving.
According to the law, if anybody causes an accident by reckless and negligent driving, and kills or injures someone seriously, such person would face a maximum sentence of five years in jail or a fine of Tk 5 lakh or both.
However, if it is found that a driver has deliberately killed anyone or not averted a killing in a road accident, the matter would fall under either section 302 (murder) or 304 (culpable homicide) of the Penal Code, according to the explanation of the proposed act by the law minister.
The maximum punishment under section 302 of the Penal Code is the death penalty while it is life imprisonment under section 304.
