brad brace contemporary culture scrapbook

CHITTAGONG, Bangladesh Angry passengers ransacked train stations and roughed up a station master Wednesday, after a railway workers’ strike left them stranded in eastern Bangladesh, an official and police said.
 
The Bangladesh Railway workers’ union called the strike to protest government plans to make the state-run service a state-funded independently managed corporation.
 
The workers are angry because they think they will lose privileges that government employees currently receive.
 
Striking workers barricaded rail tracks with logs and stones, forcing at least six express trains heading either to or from the port city of Chittagong to halt before they completed their journeys, said Bangladesh Railway spokesman Shafiqul Alam Khan.
 
Angry passengers climbed off the overnight express from Dhaka at Kumira station near Chittagong and beat up station master Abdus Salam who had stopped the train to prevent it from crashing into barricades further along the track, Khan said.
 
Salam was being treated at a railway hospital, he said.
 
Passengers also vandalized stations and trains at Fauzdarghat and Bhatiari after their trains had to stop before they reached their destinations, officers at the Railway Police control room said on condition of anonymity according to official policy.
 
Police arrested at least two people for vandalism in Bhatiari.
 
Khan said authorities were negotiating with the union.
 
The strike disrupted railway traffic on another 21 routes in the eastern zone, which is headquartered in Chittagong. Railway police have been deployed at stations to prevent any more trouble, Khan said.
 
Hundreds of passengers in Chittagong, some carrying children and luggage, were seen walking to nearby highways to look for alternative transport.