Transport workers on countrywide work abstention

Transport workers took their protests to a bigger scale protesting conviction of two fellow drivers and leaving commuters stranded in Dhaka and all over the country.

The death conviction of a trucker in Dhaka yesterday fueled the transport workers who were already on strike in Khulna division and helped it spread countrywide.

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The workers are protesting the penalties to two transport workers, Osman Ali, general secretary of Bangladesh Road Transport Workers' Federation, told The Daily Star.

Thousands of passengers remain stranded at Gabtoli bus terminal, one of the entry points to the capital. Transport workers were seen forcefully stopping passenger carrying vehicles with sticks and rods.

Read more: Transport Strike in Southwest: People suffer for second day

The women and children were the worst affected as a number of women were seen waiting under the sun carrying children on their laps.

“People are suffering a lot as no buses are operating following the wildcat strike,” Liton Kumar Saha, additional commissioner (traffic), told Prothom Alo.

People suffer as workers clamp strike

Inside Dhaka metropolitan, inter-city buses were also a handful in numbers– mainly because the workers were forcing the vehicles to keep off the streets.

Transport workers bar all vehicles and blockade the Gabtoli cattle market crossing at Darussalam, one of the entry points to Dhaka, causing untold sufferings to passengers on February 28, 2017. Photo: Palash Khan

Similar situation was witnessed in Mirpur, as endorsed by Pallabi Police Station OC Dadan Fakir.

In Manikganj on February 22, a court awarded life for a trucker convicting him of killing eminent filmmaker Tareque Masud and media Peronality Mishuk Munier in a road crash.

Protesting, the transport workers went on strike in 10 southern districts from 6:00am Sunday.

People are suffering a lot following the wildcat strike enforced by the transport workers on Tuesday, February 28, 2017. Photo: Pankag Karmakar

A Dhaka court yesterday sentenced a trucker to death in a case filed over a road accident in Savar in 2003– after which, the transport workers took their protests countrywide.