Collecting toll on highways to be anti-people: BNP
BNP today termed Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina’s recent instruction to collect toll from long-haul vehicles plying the national highways as anti-people saying that the government is going to take such step to pick people’s pocket.
“It will be blatantly an anti-people step and passengers will ultimately be losers if the government collects toll picking people’s pocket,” BNP Senior Joint Secretary General Ruhul Kabir Rizvi came up with the remarks while addressing a press conference at the party’s Nayapaltan central office in Dhaka this noon.
Rejecting the prime minister’s instruction, the BNP leader said that the bus fare will be increased and traffic jam will take an acute turn on the highways if the decision is implemented.
Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina, while presiding over a meeting of the Executive Committee of the National Economic Council at the NEC conference room in Dhaka on Tuesday said toll should be collected from the long-distance vehicles that ply national highways.
Claiming that the country’s highways are unfit for smooth journey, Rizvi said potholes and craters have developed on the highways enormously due to the so-called development work of the government.
Amid the dilapidated condition of the highways, time and money of the passengers will be wasted besides, the bus fare will go up if the toll-posts are set up on the highways, he said.
Rizvi said around five lakh minutes will go away from people’s lives if the toll posts take only five minutes in collecting the toll from each bus only on Dhaka-Chattogram highway and as a result, the people will be forced to shoulder all the burden of the toll.
The government has indulged in corruption by widening the tax net and increasing utility charges, the BNP leader alleged calling upon the ruling quarter to stay aside from such anti-people activities.
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