Readers’ Voice

For a comfortable railway

It is difficult to get a comfortable seat on the train of the Bangladesh Railway (BR) now. Millions of passengers journey by buses that cost them very high fares. They travel by bus finding no other alternative to travel. The private bus owners take this as an advantage and have fixed the costly fare of bus tickets.
Bangladesh is a developing country as she has achieved all three criteria of the UN to be called a developing country. Purchasing capacity of people here been enhanced. They desire a comfortable rail journey. Government had increased train fare a few years ago. The increased fair is still far less than bus fare. As the BR was operating at huge loss and bus fare is much higher than that of train fare at this backdrop the increasing train fare will not be irrational. Train travel is much safer than by road.
More driving locomotives, passenger bogies and good bogies have been imported. As the Bangladesh Railway is a losing concern it could not provide efficient services incurring loss years together. It is high time that authorities should stop importing non-air-cool bogies rather import air-cooled passenger bogies to increase income of Bangladesh Railway, which will contribute to reduce loss and develop the environment to improve service quality. If fifty percent air cooled passenger bogies could be introduced, the fare of travel by air cooled bogies could be reduced significantly, which would attract more passengers to travel in air cooled bogies. It will reduce the dependence on dangerous bus travel of countrymen and facilitate the profitability of the BR.

Md Ashraf Hossain
Middle Bashabo, Dhaka

Poor disaster risk management

Bangladesh stands fifth among the top disaster risk countries in the world. When our neighboring countries take various initiatives to make their people more aware to protect the natural environment, to ensure a suitable living environment for themselves and their future generations, we cannot make our position strong due to lack of apathy and ability of the authorities. It is a serious threat for us as well as for the future generations.
Lack of modern tools needed to prevent the disaster, lack of experienced and skilled manpower, absence of environmental protection, mismanagement and failure of the concerned people, proper environmental knowledge, lack of training and programs and environmental research make the situation more worsening.

Hasnain Khandoker
Narayanganj