8,000 Ansar members to guard 2,000 km rail lines

Munima Sultana | Published: December 04, 2013 00:00:00 | Updated: November 30, 2024 06:01:00

The Bangladesh Railway will deploy more than 8,000 members of Ansar to protect its operational lines along over 2,000 kilometres from violent activities.
The decision came as attacks on rail lines and bogies continued throughout the country during the opposition-enforced road blockade programme.
Railway Ministry officials said two members of Ansar will be deployed for each two kilometres of track.
"A total of four Ansar members will be patrolling round the clock in two shifts. The patrol will hopefully start from Wednesday," said an official preferring not to be named.
He said the Ansar members will take help of the law-enforcing agencies to take actions against hooligans found to be trying to create any anarchy along their assigned two km line.
The BR has 2,082 km operational tracts out of its total 2,878 km line throughout the country for which it has sought some 8,328 Ansar members to guard the valuable lines.
Since political instability began early this year, the BR has faced loss of more than Tk 500 million due to uprooting of fishplates, torching of rail bogies and tracks and derailment of bogies.
As a result, the BR has lost around 40 per cent passenger capacity throughout the country.
"We are trying with all our efforts to run the pro-people railway service with whatever we have," said BR director general Abu Taher.
He said normal functioning of the BR, which was affected due to lawless activities, would take several years.
The BR senior officials said total loss of the transport service will be assessed after inspecting the damaged trains now lying at workshops.
However, another statistics of the BR shows, since November 25 when the opposition party-enforced road blockade programme began, the railway faced some 242 lawless incidents which caused damage of resources valued at an estimated Tk 80 million.
The state-owned railway also faced loss of around Tk 260 million since the turmoil began centering verdict of Jamaat leader Delwar Hossain Sayeedi.