Ride-Sharing Services Off from Mar 26

Thousands of motorcycles and private cars running under app-based ride-sharing systems will be off the roads from Thursday (Mar 26) for ten days.

All app-based ride-sharing services will be suspended until April 4 to conform with a Bangladesh Road Transport Authority (BRTA) order to impose a prohibition on public transport, which officials called a virtual distance policy to curtail coronavirus spread.

The government imposed a ban on all public transport in Bangladesh on Tuesday (Mar 24), to curb the Covid-19 pandemic, and to ensure mutual alienation and distancing.

The Road Transport Act of Bangladesh deems any motorized vehicle that carries charging customers as public transport.

Consequently, all private motor vehicles such as buses, taxis, autorickshaws, and other individual haulers (such as Nasimon, Porimon) would be subject to the ban. People are only permitted to travel about using rickshaws as per the act.

Launched in 2016, Uber gained fast popularity in Dhaka, the city of traffic congestions and transport chaos. Pathao, OBHAI, Pickme, Shohoz and some other ridesharing firms are also operating in Bangladesh.

a new strain of coronavirus that was first identified last December in China's Wuhan, has taken four lives and infected 39 people in the world until Tuesday.