CHITTAGONG, Oct 20: Owners and operators of prime movers and trailers engaged in carrying containers of export and import throughout the country have said the police are regularly extorting money and harassing them in the city.
They said this at a protest meeting at Saltgola in front of the CCT (Chittagong Container Terminal) gate of Chittagong Port Sunday evening.
"Unless the government stops the police from extorting money from prime mover operators within a month, the association of the prime mover operators and owners will stop running the long vehicles with containers," said president of the association AKM Akhtar Hossain.
He said some 3,000 prime movers are engaged in carrying containers of import and export.
"We have given one month's ultimatum to the government to stop police harassment; otherwise we will go for an indefinite strike," he said.
The protest meeting was also addressed by Abu Bakkar Siddiqui, Morshed Rahman, Abdur Razzak, Mohammed Alvi, Firoz Khan, Enamul Hoque and Mohammed Hossain.
The leaders said 70 per cent of the country's total import and export cargoes and containers are carried by the prime movers and trailers to the destinations of the consumers. But the traffic police and thana police in Chittagong seize their vehicle documents and harass them at different points if they don't get the illegal money from the operators.
"Each of these long vehicles cost Tk 5 to 6 million. But we are incurring financial loss every year because we have to pay extra money as ransom to the police department. It is impossible on our part to run the business any more incurring loss," Akhtar Hossain, also president of the Chittagong Customs Clearing and Forwarding Agents Association, said.
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