People in the Rajshahi city with Eid-ul-Fitr in the offing are desperately grappling for bus and train tickets.
On Friday morning at the Rajshahi bus terminal hundreds of people were found waiting in long queues in front of the ticket counters of different bus companies.
Many said they had to pay extra for the tickets.
Akbar Ali, a bank officer, who bought tickets for going to Naogaon, said he paid Tk 100 per ticket while the regular charge was Tk 80.
Saifun Nahar Ratna, a Rajshahi University student, said the regular bus fare for Rajshahi-Panchagarh route was Tk 300 per seat but the ticket sellers charged Tk 50 more from the Eid passengers.
The bus owners denied the allegations though.
Manjur Rahman Pitar, general secretary of the Rajshahi Bus Owners Association, told New Age that they had heard some irregularities were going on at the terminal regarding the ticket selling but the companies were not involved in it.
He rather blamed outsiders for the troubles.
'Some fake passengers buy tickets and sell them to the real passengers at high prices,' he said.
At the Rajshahi railway station Friday dawned with a terrible chaos. More and more people wanting to buy tickets joined the crowd that stationed themselves at the platforms from about midnight.
The railway department previously announced that they would sell tickets on Thursday and Friday for the Rajshahi-Dhaka route for September 3.
But the authorities, having opened the booking counter about 9:30am, declared all the tickets on that route for September 3 were sold out on Thursday.
They then started selling tickets for that route scheduled on September 4 but declared all sold within about three hours.
Angry protests rose from the crowd when the booking officials announced that no tickets were available for the AC compartments after selling tickets for only four such seats.
The officials then explained that of the 240 AC chair and 60 AC berth tickets available for the three trains, namely Silk City Express, Padma Express and Dhumketu Express, 25 per cent were sold through a mobile phone operator, another 25-35 per cent kept reserved for the VIPs and army personnel and yet another chunk went to the railway staff and top government officials.
Waliur Rahman Babu, who had been waiting there since 3:00am for a ticket of an AC seat, said he could only manage a non-AC one.
'I'm lucky though to land it. Many couldn't even get that,' he said.
Sumaiya Islam, a resident of Sopura in the city, came to the station about 11:00am only to find the counter assigned for women and the disabled closed. She had to join the men's queue.
'With some other women I had asked them to open the woman counter but the stone-faced officials couldn't be bothered,' she said.
Sumaiya Islam also had to settle with a ticket for September 5 although she badly needed one for September 4.
Rajshahi railway station superintendent Ali Akbar denied any black marketing of the tickets.
The Bangladesh Railway engaged mobile operator Banglalink to sell 25 per cent of its tickets during this Eid-ul-Fitr.
A staff of the Banglalink customer care centre at Upashahar in the city told New Age that all the AC tickets allotted to them were sold out by 11:00am Friday.
'As our subscribers could buy them from anywhere in the country the tickets were fast sold out,' he said.
Source : New Age
