Passengers paid approximately Tk 5.62 crore extra on 26 bus routes across Bangladesh during the ongoing travel rush ahead of Eid-ul-Azha, according to findings released by the Passenger Welfare Association of Bangladesh on Wednesday.

A press release from the association stated that the Bus Owners Association has broken its promise and is charging exorbitant fares for various classes of buses and minibuses during the festive travel period.

Over the past few days, this situation has been observed in both city services and long-distance buses across the country, including the capital.

Although similar anarchy has been witnessed on most waterway routes, both the government and the Bus Owners Association have consistently denied these allegations.

The association claimed that the anarchy of overcharging, compounded by natural disasters, rain, overcast weather, and Kalbaisakhi (northwester storms), has rendered the festive journey unbearable for travellers.

Presenting a brief survey of the fare anarchy and an assessment of travel conditions, Md Mozammel Haque Chowdhury, secretary-general of the association, noted that only 27 out of roughly 850 long-distance routes nationwide were monitored.

The monitoring revealed that an extra fare totalling Tk 5.6193 crore was collected from 234,000 passengers across 26 of those routes.

Approximately 9.5 million passengers are travelling out of Dhaka during this Eid rush, with an estimated 30 million additional inter-district trips expected nationwide.

Mozammel warned that such widespread fare anarchy is driving up commodity prices, fuelling transport extortion, creating social unrest, and contributing to institutional irregularities, corruption, transport chaos, and road accidents.

He added that low-income individuals are being forced to travel on the roofs of buses and trains, or in open, goods-laden trucks as cheaper alternatives. To remedy this, he stressed the urgent need to place the transport control and monitoring system solely under government administration.