Transport workers and officials of the Bangladesh Road Transport Authority also admitted that there is a disparity between the reality in the transport market and the officially fixed fare.

For instance, as per the previously fixed Tk 0.80 per kilometre rate, the bus fare on a non-air conditioned bus between Dhaka and Nilphamari adds up to Tk 370. In reality the bus owners charge Tk 250 and still make hefty sums on each trip.

Nabil Enterprise operates their buses on the Dhaka Nilphamari route. The Gabtoli counter and the account department of the bus company said that on an average, every trip fetches a turnover of Tk 11,000 and the company's daily net profit from such a trip is about Tk 3000.

Ironically, following the recent hike in fuel prices the government re-fixed the fare, increasing it by Tk0.07 per km. However, the bus owners have yet to implement this most recent hike.

The whole trick of fixing an exaggerated fare lies in a secret understanding between the owners and the BRTA, said a source. Massive profits, involving hundreds of crores of taka, are made during major festivals like Eid when several crores of people travel to join their relatives across the country. This is when the owners take the opportunity to strictly enforce the government fixed prices and remain untouchable by the law. The rest of the year passengers are appeased by bus owners not charging the government fixed fares, though they still make hefty profit.

About the disparity between the reality and the government fixed chart, Golam Murshid Pintu, assistant general secretary of the Bangladesh Bus Truck Owners Association claimed that they were charging passengers less on the grounds that many regions in the south as well as in the north are poverty stricken. In eastern and southeastern routes the bus companies are however collecting officially fixed fares, he said.

Pintu further explained, "For fixing travel fare, travel distance is the key information. But unfortunately there are disputes over the travel distances of different inter district routes. The fares the owners are charging now is based on estimated distance."

The distance between Dhaka and Khulna was 335 km in 2003, according to BRTA. After construction of a bypass through Arrpara, BRTA claims the current distance as 260 km, Pintu said. However, bus owners allege the distance was not reduced as much as the BRTA claims. This type of confusion over travel distance in turn creates confusion over the fare.

Passengers are the main victim of such anomalies, said an official of the communication ministry. "Surely the owners were not running their business at a loss in the past, even though they were charging less than at present," he said. The owners however, maintain pressure on the government to increase the fare rate regularly though they collect lower fares in tune with the demand in the market.

"Of course, the fares, which the owners are collecting now, reveals the situation of the market and the demand, while the government fixed rate is unrealistic," he said. The pressure from owners, in the absence of market considerations, helped the government to increase the fare from previous chart, said the transport official. "The passengers are not in fact paying less than the market price -- it is the government fixed fare chart that is wrongly over fixed."

About the passenger transportation, Humayan Rashid, director (operations) of BRTA said, "The information about under charging in bus transportation is new to me." While asked about the inflated government fare chart and the distance disputes that affect passengers adversely, he admitted that there were disputes over the official travel distances of different bus routes. The distances BRTA follows were provided from the Roads and Highway Department, he said. The BRTA was working hard and within a short time the authority and owners would solve the route distance problem, Rashid said.