Dhaka residents suffer day-long traffic jam
The Dhaka city roads were severely gridlocked amid a huge rush of traffic yesterday, the only day this week that had neither a scheduled hartal nor it was a holiday. The photo was taken at Sonargaon Hotel intersection.Photo: STAR
The Dhaka city people suffered throughout yesterday as severe traffic jams had been crippling different routes since morning. The traffic situation was so terrible that it took hours to travel even less than a distance of half a kilometre. A staff of ETC, a bus plying the Pallabi-Gulistan route, said it took four hours and a half to reach Gulistan from Pallabi yesterday afternoon, which usually took around one hour. Meanwhile, the ambassador of Russia, who was supposed to attend a discussion of the Awami League at Suhrawardi Udyan, reached the venue some two hours late. The envoy sought apology to the AL leaders for his delay. Deputy Commissioner (traffic south) of Dhaka Metropolitan Police (DMP) Alamgir Kabir said a huge number of vehicles were on the road yesterday compared to other days, which was the main reason of the terrible gridlock. Another official of traffic department of DMP said as yesterday was the lone working day without any hartal or public holiday in the week, crowds of people came out to do their necessary works, eventually leading to the traffic jam. The city dwellers had a holiday on Sunday for Victory Day and underwent two hartals on Monday and Tuesday, and again they are going to face another hartal today (Thursday). The severe congestion continued till the night. A procession of Jamaat-e-Islami and Chhatra Shibir men at Banani in the morning protesting the recent arrest of their leaders, including Shafiqur Rahman and Tasneem Alam, worsened things even further in Mohakhali and Airport area. Meanwhile, hundreds of commuters had to wait at different bus stops across the capital for hours due to shortage of vehicles amid a huge rush of people since the afternoon. Rayhan Ahmed, a businessman of Gulistan area, said he had to cancel an important meeting at his office as he reached there two hours late. A housewife, Farida Akhtar, failed to get into any vehicle to ride back to Uttara from Dhanmondi around 2:00pm. So she came to Farmgate to catch a bus, but had to wait there for two and a half hours to get into one. Farida said, "As there were too many people, I failed to get into any bus." She said any alternative vehicles, like CNG auto-rickshaw or taxi cab, were also not available.
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