Mass departure giving Dhaka deserted look

With hours left for the three-day Eid-ul-Azha holiday to begin, the exodus of holidaymakers from the overpopulated Dhaka city started on Wednesday morning as they want to celebrate the Eid with their near and dear ones in their native villages and towns. Eid will be celebrated in Bangladesh on Friday. The mass departure is giving Dhaka a desolate look. The city’s three major bus terminals, Sadarghat launch terminal and Kamalapur Railway Station, have been experiencing huge rush of Eid passengers since Tuesday afternoon. Homebound passengers made their all-out efforts to embark on their journeys braving rains and defying all hassles. The city saw frenzied towards Tuesday evening as many working men and women joined the home-gears after the office hours apparently to avoid mass exodus over the next 24 hours. Those who had no advance tickets had to wait for hours together for tickets and once they managed tickets they had to fight nasty battles in buses, trains and launches to manage seats. According to Dhaka Metropolitan Police, around four million eid holidaymakers are supposed to leave Dhaka for their homes. “As per the information we have had so far, around 4 million people will leave Dhaka on the occasion of this Eid,” said Deputy Commissioner (Media) of the Dhaka Metropolitan (DMP) Muntasirul Islam.
Some of them have already left the city, while a large number of them started heading towards their homes on Tuesday.  Transport workers and officials said the rush on Wednesday and Thursday will be far heavier than that of Tuesday. The homebound passengers had to suffer a lot at Gabtoli, the largest bus terminal in the capital, as some buses were running behind their schedules.
Shahjahan Mia, a Barisal-bound passenger of Eagle Paribahan, said he was scheduled to leave Dhaka at 10:30am on Tuesday, but he had been waiting for four hours as the bus could not reach the terminal from outside Dhaka.
The passengers also found it hard to reach the bus terminals for huge mad rush of people’ while buses also could not reach the terminal timely from outside Dhaka due to tailbacks on the highways, according to a news agency.
- biplab