Arduous journey keeps Sandwip away

Arduous journey through difficult tracks and waterways deprived of any touch of development keeps Sandwip, an offshore island, isolated and detached from the mainstream of Chittagong.

Although Sandwip is three and a half hours away from Sadarghat of Chittagong, it takes seven hours to reach the island 45 km southwest of the port city.

Only three BIWTC launches and a sea-truck with capacity of some 400 carry over 4000 passengers from Sandwip to Chittagong daily.

The lone sea-truck of BIWTC operates everyday and completes a round trip in the Chittagong-Sandwip-Chittagong route. The vessel in a round trip ferries a maximum of 800 people across Sandwip channel between Kumira and Guptachhara.

The three BIWTC launches that travel to Hatiya and Bhola enroute to Sandwip operate four days a week. They make four one-way trips from the city's Sadarghat terminal a week with some 600 passengers in each trip.

As such, most of the people from Sandwip are to depend on privately owned trawlers and speed boats at seven ghats along the coast from Faujderhat to Mirer Sarai for their journey.

The passengers are forced to walk miles after miles through rough and muddy paths to catch a trawler or speed boat as many ghats have no approach roads and jetty.

It takes the passengers some three to four hours to cross the channel.

Abu Taher, an employee of Karnaphuli Paper Mill, said that he started from the Chittagong city at 11.00am and reached Fakirhat at 12.00 noon. "It took me two more hours to get to the shore and I have been for the trawler for around half an hour," he said.

And he started again for an over half-an hour walk through the muddy shore with the clock striking at 3 in the afternoon.

One middle-aged Shahida Begum and her four children also had the same experience. "We will have to face the same trouble on the other side too and the journey will take us almost the whole day," she said.

The passengers said neither the authorities concerned nor the lessee of the ghats cared for them.

The district council is supposed to lease out the ghats through tenders to lessees who are able to ferry people by their own transports.

Ferry movement at one ghat is now suspended following a legal fight between the district council and a lessee.

Operating at six ghats, 14 trawlers charge each passenger around Tk 50 while speed boats realise Tk 150.

Abdul Baten, General Secretary of Sandwip Association in Chittagong, said that the official fare for trawler was TK 31.25 for a passenger while they realise over TK 45. "We drew attention of district council authorities to these problems at different occasions but in vain," Baten said.

"Our only demand is now to construct a jetty at Kumira-Guptachhara ghat to continue the ferry service during the rainy season," Baten said.

The chief executive officer of District Council, Chittagong, was, reportedly, on leave and not available for comment. The secretary of the district council expressed inability to tell anything about it.