Traffic congestion
Naome Syed, Mohammadpur, Dhaka
Traffic congestion has become a major problem nowadays and the means to minimise it seems to be totally out of the hands of the caretaker government. It is a fact that in order to find a solution to this crucial problem the caretaker government may have overlooked that the initiative taken to ban all sorts of public transportation including rickshaws, human haulers and buses is indirectly facilitating the higher-income people, since they mostly travel by their own cars or sometimes on the CNG autorickshaws. But what about the common people, especially those who are from the middle class? Their problem has not changed a bit, but somehow has increased even more, because the local means of transportation, which has been prohibited at most of the commercial hubs of the city, was an affordable way of commutation for them. Now finding no other option they have to look for the expensive means of transportation such as the CNGs and the taxi cabs, the drivers of which, think of themselves as the kings of the roads, as they can charge whatever fare they like, being well aware of the helplessness of their passengers. The situation is quite the same in case of the bus commuters who cannot overcome the trouble of standing in a long queue of awaiting people for their bus to come, especially with no bus stands, eventually creating traffic jams. These buses are restricted to travelling on certain routes in the city; hence they make their stops in specific locations depriving the people who reside in remote areas. As these buses are also scarce in supply, the bus owners put their passengers in the hassle of travelling all the way standing in the sweltering heat, although they too demand high prices for their tickets. I would request the caretaker government to solve this problem by any means other than banning the small vehicles of transportation such as the rickshaws and the human haulers which were very helpful for the middle-class people. Such vehicles were also the source of livelihood to a huge number of poor people.
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