Hurry up, the New Ferry
Aricha has always been overloaded and over-used since the mid-fifties, forty years that is, as the only link between Dhaka and Chittagong divisions on the one side and Rajshahi, Khulna and Barisal divisions on the other. Aricha's service plainly amounted to keeping the nation in one piece. Can a single road - Dhaka-Aricha - and a single ghat - Aricha - discharge that responsibility of supreme importance, not for some while, but for decades at a stretch?
The Mawa alternative does not attract truckers not only because of having so many rivers to cross but also that the ferries are not eminently suitable to them.
Yes, the Bangabandhu Setu over the Jamuna will come as a great relief for Aricha. For the benefit of making it to Rajshahi Division districts at one go, it is possible that both buses and trucks would prefer the great bridge for going places even in Pabna. But as already passenger traffic to the northern districts has for long been using both trains and buses across the Jamuna, the northbound traffic would not come as that great a reliever for Aricha. The possibility of the Aricha jam can linger even after that.
Now it has been planned to introduce ferries across the Meghna to connect Chandpur and Shariatpur. We wonder at the first that this idea has struck the authorities so late in the day. Not many in the Chittagong division districts are involved in things across the Meghna - in Faridpur, Barisal, Jessore, Khulna and Kushtia, because of the great riverine barrier. But Chittagong being the main entrepot of the nation, trucks need to travel between the zones in a great number. The Chandpur-Shariatpur ferry will come to them as a godsend. And to Aricha what a relief it will provide!
The new ferry is slated to materialise in June. Can't it be done on some earlier date, say, April? Please, treat this ferry as not only good and important but also something very very urgent.
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