BRTC makes a delay to start selling bus tickets for home-bound Eid passengers

The Bangladesh Road Transport Corporation made a delayed start to sell tickets for its special bus services for people intending to observe Eid-ul-Fitr outside Dhaka.

The corporation officials said they were trying to extend their bus service to most of the districts after the prime minister, Sheikh Hasina, gave instructions to operate BRTC buses to all 64 districts.

In a circular issued on August 7, the corporation said it would arrange about 200 BRTC buses to ply on highways from August 28 until three days after Eid-ul-Fitr.

The routes are from Dhaka to Bogra, Rangpur, Mymensingh, Pabna, Comilla, Mawa and Shibalay for which the tickets would be available at Motijheel bus depot, Kalyanpur bus depot, double-decker bus depot, and Zoar Sahara bus depot from August 16, said the circular.

The intra-district Eid service would be available in Barisal, Comilla Chittagong, Pabna, Rangpur, Bogra, Khulna and Sylhet, it added.

But at 2pm on Tuesday, there was no ticket seller at the two Eid service counters at Motijheel bus depot.

The depot manager (technical) Mohammad Manowar Hossain said as the ticket sellers were not communicated about the Eid service they did not sell any ticket.

The manager asked ticket sellers from two other counters to open the sales at the two Eid counters.

Khan Kamal, chief of the bus depot, told New Age on Tuesday that they would start selling tickets from afternoon.

Sources at the double-decker bus depot said due to rains, the ticket selling had to be started from 3pm.

BRTC deputy general manager Major Quazi Shafique Uddin told New Age that ticket selling had been started at all the four counters.

'I am admitting that there was a delay in starting the ticket selling,' he added.

Meanwhile, the prime minister at a meeting on Tuesday asked the authorities concerned to run BRTC buses to all the 64 districts from Dhaka city during Eid.

Quazi Shafique Uddin said so far the corporation has taken initiatives to run its buses to about 40 districts under its Eid service.

'We may be not able to run buses to all the 64 districts from the capital but we will run buses on different inter-district routes,' he said.

Source : New Age