People suffer as rowdy strikers rule the roads

Mohammad Emdadul, an auto-rickshaw driver in Chittagong city, couldn't hit the road for three days due to transport strike.

But yesterday, he had no choice but to drive his CNG-run vehicle to take his ailing wife Zohora Begum to hospital.

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Around 8:00am, he along with his wife started for Chittagong Medical College Hospital from his home in Bandartila area. But his fellow auto-rickshaw drivers intercepted his vehicle on the road nearby. He pleaded them to let him and his wife go, and they did.

But when his auto-rickshaw reached near EPZ intersection around a kilometre from his house, some unruly protesters vandalised the vehicle, forcing him to abandon it and take a rickshaw van.

"It took us three hours to reach the hospital only 15 km from my house. My wife was in unbearable pain and passed out once, but I was helpless," said Emdadul.

Like him, thousands of people endured untold sufferings yesterday as transport workers kept buses and trucks off the road across the country for two days.

The workers yesterday even obstructed plying of private vehicles in different areas of the capital and a number of districts, including Chittagong. They also intercepted an ambulance in the capital's Gabtoli Bus Terminal area.

On Sunday, transport workers went on strike in 10 southern districts under Khulna division, protesting a verdict that gave life sentence to a bus driver over the deaths of filmmaker Tareque Masud, media personality Ashfaque Munier Mishuk and three others in a road accident in 2011.

Without any formal announcement, the workers later extended their strike to other parts of the country after a Dhaka court awarded capital punishment to a trucker on Monday over the death of a woman in Savar in 2003.

They, however, resumed transport operation yesterday afternoon following Shipping Minister Shajahan Khan's “request”.

But in the meantime, people were made to suffer and businesses had to incur heavy losses for something they had nothing to do with.

Yesterday, no long-haul buses arrived or left the capital's bus terminals. Only BRTC buses plied the city roads. People had to walk miles with their belongings to go to their destinations. Many were seen boarding rickshaw vans.

"What was our fault? Why people had to suffer for the unlawful demands of the transport workers?" asked Maksudur Rahman, a private service holder in Mirpur area.

He had to go to his office in Gulshan area by changing modes of transport several times.

Shuvo, a resident of the city's Rampura area, started for his village home in Dhamrai with his wife and two children around 11:30am.

He had to change human haulers thrice to reach Technical Intersection near Gabtoli.

Carrying a large travel bag on one shoulder and his four-year-old daughter on the other, Shuvo started walking towards Amin Bazar to catch a vehicle. His wife Shaila was trailing him with their two-year-old son.

"There was no vehicle that would take us to Amin Bazar from Kalyanpur," he said.

Transport workers stopped vehicular movement from Technical Intersection to Amin Bazar following sporadic clashes between them and police. One worker was killed in the clashes in the morning.

The strike compelled Mollah Sheikh, 48, a physically challenged man, to walk from Shah Ali shrine to Gabtoli on Tuesday night as he needed to go to Pabna to see his ailing daughter.

"I had to stay at Gabtoli last night [Tuesday night] as I could not afford to pay the rickshaw fare to get back to Shah Ali shrine area. I have only Tk 150," he told this correspondent yesterday afternoon.

Md Anwar, a mason, and his co-worker Md Jewel, started for the capital from Comilla Cantonment area around 8:30am. They were not aware of the transport strike but faced the reality after boarding a bus.

They had to pay Tk 50 more than the actual fare. As they reached Kanchpur, transport workers forced them to get down from the bus.

Carrying two huge bags, they walked to Chittagong road, and hired a rickshaw for Tk 100 to reach Jatrabari in the capital. From there, they took another rickshaw to go to Shahbagh.

Failing to get any vehicle to go to their destination in the city's Kazipara area, they started walking again.

"We suffered a lot to due to the transport strike," Anwar told this correspondent.

In Chittagong city, Mohammed Imtiaz, owner of a stationery shop at Golam Rasul Market, said, "As there was no public transport, I had to spend Tk 200, ten times the usual fare, to go to New Market from Katgar by rickshaw."

The situation was almost the same in many districts, according to reports from our correspondents.

In Feni, transport workers put barricades on the bypass road of the Dhaka-Chittagong highway.