Commuters' plight
Ireen Sultana, Dhaka
The word 'people' has some synonyms based on their activities or situation. Of course the common and well-known terms are citizens, customers, consumers and commuters. There are more, but let's just concentrate on how the "people" in our country start their day. We wake up and get fresh and think to have a wonderful breakfast. Obviously, all of us are burdened with a vital question nowadays What are we eating? Here the citizens are suffering as consumers. The price hike of goods is causing wrinkles on the foreheads of all consumers. Let's just come out from home and start the struggle on the way to office. We don't have good (spacious, longer) bus-stands with sheds to protect us from sunlight and rain. Most of the time the commuters wait on the roads, some maintain a line and some just in an anomalous way. This creates a problem when passengers get into and get down from the bus. No bus follows an appropriate way of taking passengers. Besides, most of the time passengers need to get down from a running bus! This is very risky. The seats are very uncomfortable in some buses. Some small buses carry standing passengers where they have to bend themselves. Even no handle to hold and stand properly! Too narrow space between two seats and that causes muscle pain and back pain later. Sometimes a smell comes out from the engine, may be because of impure fuel burning which causes serious coughing among the passengers in the bus. Every day we have to waste two hours or more just because of traffic jam and it seems we are getting used to this kind of a situation. Do we ever think that two hours of our daily life could be used for some creative work or even for relaxation? Nevertheless, the unwanted horns prove how careless we are. No wonder, whoever holds the driving wheel likes to press the horn-button. We really need proper and transparent planning and budget to solve all these problems. We need large, spacious buses, more double-deckers. Every location must have a bus-stand and all types of buses must maintain a passenger queue. There is a saying that morning shows the day. After running behind the bus to reach the office on time and watching all those unpleasant scenes, we may lose the patience to greet our friends and colleagues! I hope the government will concentrate on the transport sector to lessen the miseries of commuters.
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