Eid vacationers long for smooth journey

The arrangement of tight security in order to facilitate smooth selling of advance bus tickets for Eid vacationers is an indication that the authorities are quite aware of the problems people face in procuring tickets just ahead of the big festival. Festival-time rushes of home-bound crowds far outstrip the fleets of public transports at the disposal of the operators - both government and private. Even the few buses of the Bangladesh Road Transport Corporation (BRTC) running on long routes have been leased out to private operators. Neither waterways nor railways can match the capacity of road transports to carry passengers. So the extra pressure on bus services leads to all kinds of irregularities, chaos and confusion. A few of these negative developments repeat year after year. Yet, if the authorities are attentive, some kind of discipline can be brought in the system. The introduction of law-enforcement agencies at the city's main bus terminals a few years back helped a lot. Let the same happen this year as well.

Of the many ordeals including harassment of varying types and degrees passengers are subjected to, one is the non-availability of tickets long before those are actually sold to genuine passengers. Black-marketing is the name of the game. There are people to put a hint that tickets may be available if only the passenger/s was/were ready to part with some extra bucks. Another such problem concerns the unilateral and, at times, arbitrary rise in bus fare by the association of the bus operators. Next comes the break-down in schedules of bus services on account of heavy rushes and wretched road conditions. The communication minister went for populism when he warned that if home-bound people were made to suffer, he would do the same to the engineers responsible for maintenance of roads and highways. Why blame the engineers? Repairing roads cannot be done overnight but the minister gives only 48 hours for the job when dry months passed by listlessly. A magic wand has to be in order to accomplish the task.

One has to be pragmatic enough in works like road repair. The rainy season has now set in. And everyone, including the minister, knew that the month of Ramadan and the rainy season would coincide this time. Any repair work of roads will now be a mere patchwork and will not last long enough to do justice to the money spent on this. The ministry should have got its acts together when there was no rain. Playing to the gallery will only expose the ministry's lack of seriousness in the matter. Sure enough, the authorities deserve kudos for posting the vigilance at the bus terminals. To enforce order in the system, the role played by the authorities will be appreciated. But if things go awry on account of lack of tight vigilance, they will have to take the blame. Similarly, the ministry responsible for maintenance of roads cannot shirk its responsibility for responding late to a matter of great concern. Bad roads and highways not only impede journey but are also a cause for fatal accidents.