City Desk :
The Bangladesh Jatri Kalyan Samity (BJKS) has demanded a government initiative to display a separate “half fare” list on each bus for the students.
They made the demand referring to the disputes, scuffles, and fights between students and transport workers over half fares.
The demand was made in a statement sent on Tuesday by Mahmudul Hasan Russell, BJKS publicity secretary.
The statement said that following intense student protests, on December 1, 2021, leaders of the Bangladesh Road Transport Owners’ Association and the Dhaka Road Transport Owners’ Association agreed to accept half fare for students on city service buses in Dhaka and Chittagong.
Subsequently, the BRTA (Bangladesh Road Transport Authority) issued a notification regarding the collection of half fare from students.
However, in the absence of a separate official fare list based on the half fare for students, incidents of scuffles, fights, and even bus vandalism between fare collectors and students have occurred.
The association mentioned that some buses do not accept half fares, leading to instances where students have stopped buses from the same company while they were on the road.
In some cases, students were even thrown off buses following disputes over this issue.
The BJKS also mentioned that students have been put in direct confrontation with fare collectors, to the point where buses refuse to take students simply by seeing their uniforms.
In reality, city service bus owners announced the acceptance of half fares for students.
However, these bus owners lease the buses to drivers or fare collectors under a daily rental contract.
If half fare is collected from students, the total fare collected decreases, and the burden falls entirely on the driver or the fare collector who operates the bus on that daily contract. This is why drivers and fare collectors end up in conflict with students.
In this situation, the BJKS demanded that the government, under the leadership of the BRTA, ensure a separate fare list for students is displayed on each bus and that buses are operated in a way that guarantees owners’ profits according to the agreed fare structure.
On Monday, the Dhaka Road Transport Owners Association announced that it will implement a seven-day half fare for students travelling on buses in metro areas.