At least 20 people are feared dead after a sand-laden boat sank in the Meghna river early Tuesday.

Officials said the boat carrying 34 labourers capsized after it collided with an oil tanker near Charjhapta area of Munshiganj.

Of the missing people, 17 are from Bhangura upazila of Pabna, one from Sirajganj's Ullapara and two others are yet to be identified, said police.

Rescuers of police, coastguards, Bangladesh Inland Water Transport Authorities and fire services tried to find the missing people from dawn to dusk yesterday, said Faruk Ahmed, upazila nirbahi officer of Munshiganj.

Family members of one of the missing men break down in tears at their home in Pabna's Bhangura upazila. Photo: Star

In Bhangura, grieving family members yesterday said the authorities had not started the rescue operation when there was time.

Quoting survivors, UNO Faruk said the boat was going to Narayanganj's Boktaboli from Cumilla's Daudkandi.

After it capsized, 14 people managed to survive.

Habibur Rahman, another survivor, told reporters that he and several others had swam for almost an hour before they were rescued by another boat.

Another survivor Mahmud Ali said, “If police and administration took prompt action, some people could have been rescued.”

Harun-or-Rashid, officer-in-charge of Munshiganj's Gazaria Police Station, said police from Pabna first informed them about the incident.

“We informed it to the river police. But river police in the evening told us that they did not find any such incident.

“Around 9:00pm today [yesterday], a survivor named Shah Alam came to me and told me about the incident. But we could not start a search operation at night,” he said.

Ashfaquzzaman, additional superintendent of police in Munsinganj, said they started the rescue operation around 8:00am.

Talking to journalists, Gazaria UNO Hasan Sadi said the survivors could not identify the accident spot accurately as there was dense fog at night when the accident took place.

Meanwhile, Asadur Rahman, chairman of Khanmorich union in Pabna's Bhangura, told our Pabna correspondent that the missing men went to Munshiganj to look for work a couple of weeks ago.

Mundumala village, where 15 of the missing men lived, families are in utter shock.

Jabbar Ali, an elderly man, said his two sons Ariful and Mostafa and son-in-law had remained missing.