Truck owners call off strike

News Desk :
The owners of goods-carrying transports have withdrawn their indefinite strike following a meeting with the home minister on Monday night.
Earlier, top leaders of the Bangladesh Covered Van-Truck Prime Mover Goods Transport Owners’ Association sat with Home Minister Asaduzzaman Khan Kamal at the minister’s Secretariat office.
The bus and launch owners have already withdrawn their strike after the government agreed to raise the fares.
The truck owners’ association enforced the strike on Friday and kept operations suspended till
After the meeting, the minister said that he would talk to the leaders of the exporters’ bodies and request them to pay the transporters as per the revised fare.
“We came to understand that our three-point demand will not be met and the diesel price will not be decreased. We pressed the ministry to set new, raised fares for goods transport vehicles,” Association President Md Tofazzal Hossain Majumder told the media.
“Fares may rise between 10% and 20% on all routes. A concrete decision on setting the new fares has not been fixed by the ministry,” he added.
On Wednesday, the government increased diesel and kerosene prices by Tk15 per litre – from Tk65 to Tk80 – in order to keep them in line with rising fuel prices in the global market.
In protest against the move, different associations of public and cargo transport owners and workers on Friday launched a strike for an indefinite period, inconveniencing commuters across the country.