Unprecedented ferry ghat ordeal

The heavy rush and long queues at the river terminals are nothing new during the Eid holidays. But the fog that persisted for nearly three days did not come all of a sudden and transport operators should have been aware of the grave danger associated with such weather conditions. The Met office was expected to send the message to all concerned, but it seems the issue was either not handled with due seriousness or the transport operators completely ignored whatever information they had. Their only concern was to make extra profits. There was nobody to consider whether the buses would reach their destinations.

People, including children and women, were left without food, water and toilet facilities in biting cold. Well, they were ready to undertake an arduous journey, but how could the transport operators leave Dhaka knowing well that the queues at the river terminals were getting longer and longer? There was apparently no exchange of information and the sufferings of the passengers are only proof of the total insensitivity of all concerned, including the transport authorities, to the passengers' well-being. Clearly, we don't have any contingency handling mechanism. The situation was going out of control when the ferries stopped plying, but there was nobody to prevent its further worsening.

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The ordeal that a huge number of bus passengers faced could have been avoided, or at least mitigated to a great extent , with better planning and timely response to the crisis. One would expect that such wholesale pushing of people towards a totally uncertain journey won't be repeated in future.