IT has become an unfortunate trend of homebound passengers to suffer immensely at the hands of ticket sellers of trains and buses in Dhaka during religious festivals. This year, Durga Puja will be celebrated between October 1-3 and Eid-ul-Azha will be celebrated starting from the 6th of October. National dailies reported that prospecting passengers sleeping overnight at Kamalapur Railway Station (and others) in the capital in the hopes of legally purchasing advance tickets for holiday travels were met with utter shock and disappointment as almost all tickets of intercity trains were sold out within an hour after the advance sale began. Similar reports came from Chittagong and Sylhet.
Reports also state that several thousand people also suffered due to mismanagement during the ticket sale. Railway authorities started selling advance tickets for a Dhaka-Khulna train one and a half hour late. Most people waiting for tickets since Thursday did not get any tickets on Friday morning and many alleged that a few Railway officers were involved in the sale of tickets on black market at higher rates, not to mention the number of tickets kept reserved for ‘very important persons’, which lead to the crisis.
Even though Railway authorities showed concern over the growing pressure for tickets indicating the high demand for advance tickets for travel, this situation in no way comes as a surprise as it is not a recent phenomenon that people travel outside Dhaka to their home districts during religious festivities. It is one of the few situations which can be almost accurately predicted and public authorities turn a blind eye to the issues every year, ignoring the plights of millions of passengers.
According to the railway chart on allocation of seats on inter-city trains, Turna Nishitha has a total of 220 AC chairs while about 100 chairs or 47 percent of them are kept reserved for online, VIP, Railway staff and regular quotas. To add to the existing ills, reports show that ticket counter staff are too slow in providing service. It is outrageous how such inefficiency and mismanagement keeps prevailing every single year and the authorities responsible look the other way and present unreasonable statements like ‘this happens all the time’ and continue ignoring such a gaping hole in the government’s holiday transport initiatives or plans. Effective steps need to be taken by transport authorities, public and private, so that the continued harassment of passengers decrease and the festive season can be actually enjoyed by the hardworking taxpayers of the nation.
It is totally unacceptable that 47 percent of tickets are kept for so-called VIPs – why should they be given priority over normal citizens? Just because they are high government officials does not mean that they should have more rights at the expense of our already long suffering commuters – especially when they are in charge of selling tickets and fail miserably to check the black markets which occur in ticket sales every single year. Unfortunately our transport officials and Ministry are least bothered and only one thing is absolutely certain – these incidents will be repeated next year.
