Eid holidayers in Lakshmipur are paying as much a double the amount the bus fare fixed by the government as they are returning to the cities for work after celebrating the festival with their families.
Several Dhaka and Chittagong-bound travellers complained that the bus owners were taking advantage of the fact that the Dhaka-Lakshmipur road is the only medium of communication between the two districts.
Sources said a mobile court of Bangladesh Road Transport Authority (BRTA) issued a warning against the intercity bus service owners – including Econo Paribahan, Grameen Paribahan, Dhaka Express and Jonaki Paribahan – in this regard on Monday, yet they have not stopped demanding twice the set amount of bus fare.
“I had to pay Tk550 per ticket to get tickets for my family from Econo Paribahan,” Dhaka-bound passenger Abdur Rahim told the Dhaka Tribune yesterday at Lakshmipur bus terminal. “Last year, it cost me around Tk400 for a ticket, but this year they are charging Tk550. There is no one to monitor this illegal practice.”
Another traveller, Shamima Sultana, complained that the bus fare chart prepared by the government was not available anywhere in the bus terminal.
Asked about passenger complaints, Econo Paribahan’s manager at Lakshmipur terminal, Sumon Ghosh, said: “We are charging merely Tk150 more than the fixed Tk400 per ticket, because the number of passengers travelling to Dhaka is small.”
Syed Aynul Huda Chowdhury, assistant director at Lakshmipur BRTA, said: “We have summoned the bus service owners to discuss this issue, and our mobile court have already issued a warning in this regard. But we cannot conduct mobile court whenever we want because we do not have a magistrate.”
