Move to Stop Illegal Rail Ticket Sale
Rly blacklists 6,500 cellphone numbers
The Bangladesh Railway (BR) has blacklisted around 6,500 mobile phone numbers of suspected touts to stop selling of tickets in black market.
The rail authorities have also pinpointed that black marketers are taking advantage of e-ticketing system by purchasing majority of the remote-ticket quota. The authorities have restricted e-ticket booking hours.
Under this restriction, online purchase of tickets will remain suspended between 9:00am and 11:00am daily.
High officials of the railway said this at a press conference in the city yesterday morning.
“In addition to addressing the ticket problems, the Bangladesh Railway will increase the number of bogeys in all the four daily Dhaka-Chittagong rail services within a short period time,” said Mohammed Shahjahan, additional director general (operation) of BR.
He added that the railway will also re-build Chittagong-Dohajari route and Chittagong-Najirhat route and import new rail engines and cars soon.
General Manager of BR East Zone Yusuf Ali Mridha said they in an investigation found that certain mobile phone users were buying a lot of tickets in advance and selling the same numbers to actual passengers at a much higher price.
Mobile and online purchases constitute half of the ticket sales, while the remaining is sold directly from the countres. A total of 36 countres in the capital and six countres in the port city are providing the mobile and online sales service.
Now the authorities have started a close monitoring on the ticket countres to check further black marketing of tickets.
On March 23, ticket buyers staged demonstration at the Chittagong Railway Station protesting black marketing of train tickets.
They also encircled the station manager's room for more than one hour.
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