Home –goers risk their lives.

Home –goers risk their lives

Launch operators are cashing in on the huge rush of passengers and overloading their vessels on Mawa-Kandi route in the Padma river risking lives of thousands ahead of eid. The authorities concerned are turning a blind eye to the nuisance , though the government has repeatedly announced of taking stern actions against overload. In the past, many launches sank due mainly to overloading .

 Event passenger vessel pinak-6 sank in the turbulent Padma on August 4,2014 while carrying more that 200 people against its capacity of 85. Forty-eight bodies were recovered and 62 were missing in that disaster. During a visit to the Mawa launches terminal yesterday it was seen that more of the lunches were carrying passengers more than double of their capacity. Their correspondent randomly selected some launches at the terminal, checked their capacity and counted the passenger on board. The launches MV Princes has the capacity to carry 169 passenger and left the terminal with around  350 passenger on board around 12:00pm.The MV shaon Express has the capacity to carry 189 passenger. But it was capacity around 360 passenger. The Zihan and Zayan has the capacity of 148 passenger but it was carrying around   400 passenger .

When such overloading was going on , several members of the Bangladesh Inland Transporting Authority(BIWTA) and police were seen on during at the terminal. They were not checking the capacity of the launches or the number of passenger on board. They were rather……….see page