BR to add 169 carriages to its fleet during Eid

Bangladesh Railway (BR) is set to add a total of 169 carriages to its existing fleet to cater to the increased number of passengers before and after Eid, a high official said.

All the carriages will be attached with inter-city and mail trains for carrying additional passengers to ease the rush during the biggest annual festival of the Muslims, he said.

Besides, seven special trains will also run on different routes of East and West zones of railway, the official added.

According to him, of the 169 carriage, 86 would be added to the fleet of East Zone and 83 to the West Zone.

At present BR runs 850 trains across the country through its East and West zones and carries around 0.18 million passengers everyday.

But after addition of the new coaches, the carrying capacity of BR would be increased to around 0.2 to 0.25 million, the official informed.

"We have a plan to add an increased number of carriages and trains with our existing fleet to provide better service to the greater number of home-bound and returnee passengers during the Eid-ul-Fitr holidays next month," Director (Traffic) of BR Jahirul Islam told the FE on Monday.

"To this effect, all types of repair and painting works of the carriages and trains are going on in full swing. We are hopeful of adding those to our existing fleet in time," he added.

However, a divisional superintendent (DS) of BR's workshop, preferring anonymity, told the FE over telephone that their office is facing an acute shortage of manpower to complete the repairing work in time. "Despite various limitations including manpower shortage, we are trying our best to run the activities smoothly in the workshop," he said.

"Many of our workforce have gone to retirement and absence of new recruitment for long has worsened the situation," he added. The DS also stressed the necessity of recruiting more manpower for the workshop to run regular works smoothly round the year.

Meanwhile, the Director (Traffic) said all the restored coaches will be attached with inter-city trains from July 16.

The director said all 169 carriages are being repaired under regular maintenance cost of BR.

However, according to the Director, (Traffic), strict security measures have been taken to ensure safe transaction of tickets and transportation during the festival.

"We have strengthened security measures this year which we did never do earlier to avoid any kind of mishandling of tickets and creation of unexpected situation during journey," he added.

BR has decided to start selling advance tickets of Eid from July 9, 2015.

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