Waterway workers' strike

An incident of either an internal fight  aboard a  cargo vessel as the police claimed or of robbery that workers would  have us believe, triggered work stoppage along  the inland waterways on Saturday. The fact that  seven persons  went missing  from a lighter vessel was scary  to the remaining crew but  the wild cat strike resorted to by all waterway  workers  smacks of precipitate action.
True, there has been a nagging  sense of insecurity in our inland waterways  due to robbery and extortionist forays  and the workers  have had  pent–up grievances about.Even allowing for that, in this particular case, they should have  insisted on an expeditious rescue operation and demanded to see the colleagues  first  even  before  going for a limited  suspension,let alone triggering  a country-wide  work abstention.
The chain effects have already engulfed Mongla and Narayanganj with three lakh workers of 20,000 cargo-carriers joining in, when last reports came in. The outer anchorage of Chittagong Port  has felt the ripple effect. All this can have a telling  impact on trade and business particularly in the backdrop of  a series of hartals.
It imperative   that  the inland waterway authority  engages the Bangladesh Noujan Sramik Federation in a dialogue with participation of  representative from  river police and coast guards to devise effective ways and means to combat  robbery and extortion along the waterways. We cannot leave our  rivers so frighteningly  unsafe.