Ctg prime mover-trailer workers call 24-hour work abstention from Thursday

Workers and drivers of prime movers and trailers -- vehicles that are used to transport containers and other goods from Chattogram port to elsewhere -- have called for a 24-hour work abstention from Thursday morning to realise their three-point demands.

Md Abu Bakkar Siddiqui, general secretary of Prime Mover-Trailer Sramik Union, a platform of the workers and drivers, announced the programme at a press conference at the Chattogram Press Club yesterday.

The workers demanded the Bangladesh Road Transport Authority provide them with licences for driving heavy vehicles and that employers give them joining letters and identity cards while recruiting them. About 16,000 people are engaged in the sector and most of them do not have licences for driving heavy vehicles, he said.

The drivers have long been applying to the BRTA to offer them such licences under a special arrangement, he added.

BRTA officials, however, said they have to go by the book.

Besides, the labour court had directed the owners of prime movers and trailers to issue identity cards and joining letters for the workers while employing them, but the order fell on deaf ears, Siddiqui said.