On the last day of Ramadan, capital Dhaka wore a deserted look as thousands of holidaymakers left the city to celebrate Eid-ul-Fitr with beloved family and friends.
Most homebound people were seen leaving Dhaka during the last four days.
On the second day of the four-day long Eid holiday, Monday, people and vehicles across the city were almost invisible, compared to usual.
In some areas, the empty haunted streets turned into playgrounds for children.
However, some people were seen going to bazars and shopping centres for their last-minute purchases.
Rickshaws and CNGs charged extra fares ahead of Eid.
Rows of buses were seen parked on roads in front of different bus terminals of the capital.
A last-minute shopper, Abdul Kader from Mirpur 12, said buses were not sufficient on the streets and the auto-rickshaws charged high fares. So it was difficult for him to manage transport through the city but he was happy that he didn’t have to be stuck in the jam for hours.
A pedestrian, Rafiqul Islam of Farmgate area said that people couldn’t celebrate Eid in full swing due to Covid-19 restrictions for the last two years. This year people are able to go home or travel to their desired places freely and that’s why the capital seemed more empty than other times.
What happened to the buses?
City dwellers since Saturday (Apr 30) faced a serious transport crisis for the lack of local buses, as most were converted to inter-district services carrying homebound people ahead of Eid-ul-Fitr.
The number of local buses plying the city streets was very thin since Saturday morning, leaving many commuters to suffer long waits for transportation and forcing many of them to reach their destination on foot.
Taking advantage of the sudden transport shortage in the city, passengers alleged that the bus operators, rickshaw pullers and the CNG auto-rickshaw drivers were charging excessive fares.
A leader of the Dhaka Road Transport Owners' Association said the number of buses had decreased in the capital as maximum city buses started carrying home-bound people, especially the garments workers towards northern and other districts from Thursday (Apr 29) night.
“Many of the buses that run in Dhaka went to the different districts carrying the homebound people to make some ‘extra trips,'" he said.
Number of people leaving Dhaka
Over 73 lakh SIM subscribers of different mobile operators left the city for their respective village homes in the last four days.
A total of 43,09,216 (over 43 lakh)SIM subscribers left the capital in two days, Posts,Telecommunications and Information Technology Minister Mustafa Jabbar shared through a Facebook post on Sunday.
He shared a chart provided by mobile operators that showed 1,932,990 mobile (over 19 lakh) SIM subscribers left the capital on April 29 and 2,376,226 (over 23 lakh)on April 30.
Of them, 1,862,136 were Grameenphone users; 1,176,340 Robi users, 1,124,732 Banglalink users, and 146,008 Teletalk users.
Mustafa Jabbar said approximately another 30 lakh SIM users left Dhaka in the previous two days.
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