The government is going to allow resumption of the services of public transports on roads, railways and waterways with passengers on all seats from August 11 after over four months.
The Cabinet Division on Sunday issued a circular in this regard.
Bangladesh Railway additional director general (operation) Sardar Shahadat Ali said that railway would run 38-pair intercity and 19-pair mail and commuter trains from August 11 and would carry passengers on all seats.
The advance tickets would be available at counters and online from Monday, he added.
As per the Sunday circular, the authorities and road transport owners and workers associations were asked to run half of the transports with full capacity everyday from August 11.
On March 29, a gazette notification was published by setting 18-point directives signed by the prime minister’s principal secretary asking public transport operators to carry 50 per cent of their passenger capacity maintaining health guidelines from March 31.
Later, the government imposed restrictions on public activities and movement across the country since April 5 which is now scheduled to end on August 10.
In the meantime, services of public transports reopened for brief periods but not with full capacity.
However, these transports, especially on road and waterways transports, carried passengers on all available seats violating directions of the restrictions.
Before that, the government suspended the services of public transports on railways and waterways on March 25, 2020 following the pandemic.
The suspension was imposed on road transports on March 26, 2020.
The authorities resumed the operation of eight-pair intercity trains on May 31 and buses on June 1 of the year allowing them to run at their 50 per cent capacity while a 60 per cent increase in bus fare was imposed.
On September 1, 2020 the government allowed the bus operators to go back to normal services by withdrawing restrictions on the number of passengers and increased fare rates.
