At least six university buses, out of 31, have been lying damaged and the others often remain out of order.

Students coming from a distance suffer a lot due to lack of reliable transport facilities.

The buses plying on only 11 routes are quite inadequate for about 15,000 students living outside the campus.

Moreover, most of the buses are worn-out and go out of order frequently, resulting in cancellation of scheduled routes. Seats of many buses have also reduced to a skeleton.

Sometimes, students reach the campus hanging onto footboards and windows of buses, risking their lives, due to shortages of transports, although they pay Tk 180 in transport fees annually.

The female students are the worst sufferers as there are only six buses allocated for them and two of them went out of order.

Most interestingly, helpers and mechanics of the buses often act as drivers for shortage of genuine drivers.

The university has a total of 32 drivers and 25 helpers and technicians. Of them, nine are earmarked for the vehicles of important persons and the rest 23 drivers and 25 helpers drive the buses for students by turn.

According to budgets of previous years, the RU authorities collect about Tk. 50 lakh from the transport sector every year while the average annual expenditure in this sector is nearly Tk. 1.5 crore.

"The authorities do never forget to collect transport fees from the students, but they seem to be indifferent to the woes of the students," said a student.

The authorities' indifferent attitude has triggered discontent among the students who vandalised the transport office and damaged buses several times.

The angry students attacked the transport office on July 19 when a bus went out of order minutes before its journey to the town.

"All our efforts to solve the transport crisis proved failure due to fund crisis," said RU Vice Chancellor Prof. Faisul Islam Faruki.