City dwellers experienced serious traffic jam yesterday in the first working day under the new office timing which has been introduced to ease the problem. The government on Thursday ordered new timings for offices, educational institutions, banks and financial institutions keeping the prevailing Daylight Saving Time (DST) in place to tackle the nagging traffic jam. The decision was taken at a regular meeting of the cabinet on Monday.

Under the new timetable government, semi-government and autonomous institutions started with their old 9:00am to 5:00pm office schedule while banks, insurances, financial companies and private organisations opened from 10:00am to 6:00pm. Government primary schools from now would start at 9:30am and close at 4:15pm while other educational institutions like high schools, colleges, English-medium schools and madrasas will start between 7:00am and 8:30am and end between 1:00pm and 2:30pm.

But the experience was almost usual to most of the office goers while it waseven bitter to many others as traffic congestion was reported from most city areas yesterday including Mirpur, Dhanmondi, Karwan Bazar, Motijheel, Gulistan and Jatrabari. "It took one hour for me to reach Dhanmondi road no 32 from Sonargaon intersection by a private car. When I left Dhanmondi at 9:00pm for my office, it took 50 minutes to reach Green road intersection," said Rabiul Alam who works at an office in Karwan Bazar. "I got down from the private car at 10:10AM and reached my office after seven minutes of walking," he added.

Sufia Akhter, a lady who works in a private organisation said going from Wireless Gate to Asad Gate took her more than one hour. There was traffic jams from Elephant Road to Gulistan since early hours of the day. Abdul Ghani, an employee of a private office told the New Nation that it took him two and a half hours to reach Gulistan from Pallabi by bus. "After having enough of the interminable sojourn, I got down from the bus at Gana Bhaban point, walked up to Asad Gate and then took a rickshaw from there to reach my destination," Ghani said.

Though there are lot of discussions about monorail, metro, flyover and decentralisation of government and non-government establishments to ease traffic congestion over the years, the traffic situation is yet to witness any improvement. In the period between 2007 and 2009, a total of 2.18 lakh vehicles hit the city streets including 60 to 65 cars every day without development of required infrastructures.

-New Nation