Tk 178 cr Loan
Auto-rickshaw drivers demand waiver
Staff Correspondent
Bangladesh Auto-rickshaw Drivers Cooperatives Federation Limited at a press conference yesterday urged the government to waive interest on the outstanding loans of the federation. They demanded disbursement of Tk 50 crore to the federation for buying 5,000 new CNG-auto-rickshaws in the city. While reading out a written statement at the press briefing at the National Press Club in the city, Federation President Moazzem Hossain said since 1987 onwards, political governments have politicised the federation and inducted committees on ad-hoc basis. Due to the inefficiencies of those committees, the federation could not repay the loans taken from state-owned banks, Moazzem claimed. The accumulated figure of the loans and the ensuing interest now stands at Tk 178 crore, he said. He also said there are only 13,000 CNG-auto-rickshaws against their high demand in the city. If the loan, approved by ministry of cooperatives in 1997, were disbursed to buy CNG-auto-rickshaws, the crisis of auto-rickshaws would have been reduced, he argued. Federation Directors Md Mujibur Rahman Master, Ashraful Alam and Makbul Hossain and General Secretary of Bangladesh Sanjukta Sramik Federation Jahangir Alam Chowdhury were also present on the occasion.
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