Transport strike in Ctg: Passengers suffer amid heatwave
Sidratul Muntaha, a student, went to the port city's Natunpara bus stand area this morning in order to catch a bus to Chawkbazar, where she was scheduled to attend class at a coaching centre.
However, when she arrived at the bus stand, she found that a 48-hour transport strike was being enforced throughout Chattogram by the transport owners and workers, meaning that no bus was leaving for any destination.
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"I'm a candidate for the upcoming Nursing Admission Test. I am stuck here for almost two hours," she said around 11:00am.
The strike caused hundreds of commuters from different areas to become stranded at various locations.
Due to the strike, parents and students have also suffered tremendously as the schools and colleges have reopened today.
"We were unaware of the strike," Mamunur Rashid, a sales representative of a private company, said. "I had to wait on the road in intense heat for hours."
Transport owners and workers yesterday called the strike from this morning to press home their four-point demand.
The demands include compensation for buses burnt by the students of Chittagong University of Engineering and Technology (Cuet).
The decision was taken in a meeting of Greater Chattogram Public Transports' Owners and Workers Unity. Manjur Alam Chowdhury, the association's convener, said the strike will be enforced from 6:00am today.
"We're going through insecurity. We will implement a 48-hour transport strike in Chattogram in the best interests of the transport owners and workers. We will begin a tougher nationwide movement from May 1 if our demands are not met," he declared yesterday.
Two Cuet students were killed and another was injured in a road accident around 3:30pm on Monday when their motorbike collided head-on with a bus of Shah Amanat Paribahan on the Chattogram-Kaptai road in Rangunia's Saptapir shrine area.
Police seized the bus the same day and arrested the driver on Wednesday.
Protesting the deaths, students torched a bus on that day and seized two buses of Shah Amanat Paribahan on Monday.
On Thursday, the students torched the two other buses when the Cuet authorities issued a circular asking the students to vacate the dormitories.
Meanwhile, the Met office today extended the heat alert by 72 more hours starting this morning.
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