Hundreds of people rushed home on Sunday morning as government slapped fresh restrictions on public movement and business operations, suspending operation of all modes of public transport across the country for a week from Monday to contain the surge of COVID-19.
While visiting Gabtoli and Mohakhali inter-district bus terminals around noon, a large number of people were seen rushing to the terminals to go to their home districts.
Many public transports like buses were seen to leave terminals violating government’s order to carry 50 per cent capacity of passengers.
Lalmonirhat-bound job seeker Subrato Kumar Roy said that many transport groups charged additional fare over the increasing 60 per cent hike on the condition of carrying half of their passenger capacity.
‘Buses are collecting 60 per cent high fare but carrying passengers filling all the seats,’ he said.
Moniruzzaman, who is traveling on Dhaka-Tangail highway at about 3:00pm, said that due to the high pressure of transports, the vehicular movement became slow on the important highway.
Many people were seen to leave Dhaka riding motorcycles and some in cars and microbuses.
Transport operators said that all the tickets have already sold out in the morning.
Altaf Hossain, a staff of Sirajganj bound SI Enterprise, said that due to pressure they were compelled to sell tickets against all their seat capacity.
Passengers alleged that transport staff were black-marketing tickets to get three times higher price of tickets.
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