Passengers looking to collect online tickets of Bangladesh Railway faced less suffering yesterday than the day before, when the service resumed on a new platform after a five-day break.
The website (eticket.railway.gov.bd) started to function on time, at 8am, but passengers alleged that it was slower than usual.
The new joint platform by Shohoz Limited, Synesis IT Ltd, and Vincen Consultancy Pvt Limited launched the online ticketing service from Saturday, but passengers claimed there were several glitches on the first day.
Officials at Shohoz, which is leading the joint venture, said they may have been victim to a cyberattack on the first day, as around 2.2 million hits were reported in a single minute to the website, mostly from abroad.
Yesterday, while visiting Kamalapur Station in Dhaka, a Dhaka Tribune correspondent observed that many passengers were waiting in long queues to get the tickets. One waiting passenger said it was taking longer to collect the online tickets than it would to buy a ticket at the counter.
Shariful, a man from Noakhali district, said he tried several times to purchase a ticket online, but he failed to do so.
“I told my wife to try to collect the ticket, but she too failed. After several attempts, we faced a network error. Eventually, I physically came here at Kamalapur to collect the ticket from the counter, amid this huge queue,” he added.
Several other waiting passengers also said they rushed to the station to collect tickets in person after running into network errors on the website.
Sardar Shahadat Ali, additional director general of Bangladesh Railway, told Dhaka Tribune the issuance of tickets was taking more time due to the introduction of a new system.
“The officials concerned are not familiar with the new system and this is the reason for the delay. We are trying to solve the issue soon,” he added.
Officials at Shohoz said they had deployed railway ticketing solutions at 77 stations in Bangladesh in just 21 days.
“From 6pm to midnight on March 25, more than 45,000 tickets were sold from stations, and station-based sales were around 100,000 on March 26. The new site has finally become functional and is currently running smoothly,” said Shohoz Ltd Public Relations Manager Farhat Ahmed.
Around 7,000 online tickets were successfully sold from the new railway website between 8am to 12pm yesterday, he added.