Business and livelihood took a knock while public sufferings heightened as veritable chaos reigned supreme over the national highways in a backlash against some government decisions meant for disciplining country's disorderly road communications.
Although these decisions, like banning slow-moving vehicles from plying the highways and dumping rundown vehicles in the capital, were taken to protect the citizens from the risk of accident and other forms of chaos during their journey, but passengers became worst sufferers since those came into effect.
Passengers, transport operators and experts, however, blamed quick decision sans keeping space of any alternatives in the sensitive sector, where earnings of thousands of families are involved, for the ongoing chaos in the country's prime communications system.
They called upon the government agencies or departments concerned to do more studies and researches on the issue so that none comes under the threat of losing earnings or jobs.
At the same time, they stressed stopping reckless driving, intensifying monitoring activities for not allowing vehicles and drivers having no licence and regular maintenance of the highways and roads to make the existing road infrastructure safe and hassle-free.
There have been road blockades and violent protests on the highways since August 1 when the highway ban for slow-moving three-wheelers and locally made human haulers took effect.
Couple of days thereafter, the government in another move launched a drive against unfit vehicles in the capital where a large number of the passenger-carrying transports are rundown, or smaller in size that are not fit for streets in a capital city.
Following the cleansing action, the city was witnessing less number of passenger transports as many transport owners skipped off their outmoded vehicles to avert getting caught.
City-dwellers were seen in recent days waiting for long at each station to get into a transport and were forced to make a travel crammed with passengers.
According to the BRTA record, at least 300,000 vehicles having no fitness certificates ply roads across the country.
Many attribute frequent road accidents-some of them bizarrely tragic-largely to unfit vehicles and greenhorn drivers who know or care little about road rules.
Talking to the FE, Mozammel Haque Chowdhury of Bangladesh Jatri Kolyan Samity, an association of passengers' welfare, said they appreciated the government decisions but that caused abject sufferings to the passengers both on highways and intercity roads.
He said the passengers on highways are often facing road blockades and violent protests and condition for short-distance passengers through the national highways worsened further as they could not get enough vehicles to reach their respective destinations for not having enough transport.
"Students whose educational institutions are located beside the national highways are worst affected by the decision of highway ban. Government should ensure alternative before making such sensitive decision," he said.
Talking about the issue, convener of Bangladesh Auto-Rickshaw and Auto-Tempo Sangram Parishad Md Golam Faruque said more than 0.15 million auto-rickshaws and auto-tempos were running all over the country and about 1.0 million to 1.2 million families were dependent on them.
"But the sudden decision of ban came as a big blow to the families. The government can implement the decision by giving a specific deadline so that the drivers and owners of such vehicles can take decision about the future earning sources," he said.
Seeking on the condition of anonymity, a senior traffic official (highways) said the disturbance to vehicular movements on the highways over the last few days was created because of the ongoing protest by the operators of the three-wheelers accompanied by a group of highway-based shop operators.
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