Train schedules derailed, buses delayed

Kamalapur Railway Station Manager Shitangshu Chakrabarty said: “Sylhet-bound Parabat Express went out of order 20 minutes after its departure from the Kamalapur Railway Station.” Ir happened around 6:45am at the airport station. The glitch was fixed and the train left the station two hours later, he said. A dozen of trains missed their schedules by two to five hours because of the Parabat. The holidaymakers who procured train tickets had to endure immense sufferings due to the schedule collapse. They had to wait at the station for hours. Kamalapur Railway Station authorities said Rajshahi-bound Dhumketu Express, Chittagong-bound Mohanagar Probhati, Karnaphuli Express, Sonar Bangla Express, Netrakona-bound Mohua Express, Dewanganj-bound Eid special train, Joydebpur Express, Jamalpur-bound Agnibina Express, Rangpur Express, Dinajpur-bound Ekata Express were delayed by hours. Rajshahi-bound Silk City train was scheduled to leave Kamalapur at 1:45pm but it was yet to arrive at the station as of writing this report yesterday evening. Some 73 trains leave Kamalapur every day and 31 of them are inter-city services. More than 60,000 passengers are leaving by train from this station ahead of Eid. Only a few trains were able to leave on schedule. “We have been waiting for five hours at the station for the train with my husband, son and a daughter. We do not know when the train will move,” said Afsana Shaon, a passenger at the Kamalapur Railway Station. Amzad Hossain, director general of Bangladesh Railway, told the Dhaka tribune: “This failure is unfortunate.” Sufferings at bus-stop Sufferings at the bus stops too knew no bounds with the passengers waiting for more than 24 hours for buses. The situation was such that even bus service officials could not say exactly when buses will arrive at the city’s bus stops. Visiting the city’s Mohakhali, Gabtoli and Syedabad bus stands this correspondent yesterday found hundreds of people along with their family members waiting for buses for more than 24 hours. Sanaullah Sakib wanted to go to his home district Thakurgaon. “I have to travel tomorrow as they cannot even tell me when the bus will arrive in Dhaka,” he said. A Tangail police official said there was an accident early in the morning at Kalihati upazila and that halted the vehicular movement on the Dhaka-Tangail Highway for a long time. Ismail Khan, station master of Keya Paribahan at the Kallyanpur bus stand, said: “Our bus left Dhaka for Hili Friday night and it came back to Dhaka at 10am on Sunday. What can we do?”