A large number of people residing in the city will visit their native villages as a long holiday begins from today.

According to the government's public holiday list, April 27 and 28 are weekends, April 29 is Buddha Purnima, May 1 is May Day, May 2 is Shab e Barat, and again May 4 and 5 are weekends.

From April 27 to May 5, only April 30 and May 3 are working days. Anyone taking leave on those two days will enjoy a nine-day holiday without interruption.

However, there is bad news for all home-bound passengers: there are no launch cabin tickets for these days to and from Barisal. First class cabin tickets for the Barisal-Dhaka launch route from April 26 to May 5 have already been sold out.

The current situation has already sparked panic among Eid passengers on this route.

The launch-booking office started selling occasional return tickets from April 15. But it stopped selling such tickets from April 22.

Booking office sources said that almost all the tickets had been sold out.

Passengers, however, alleged that five per cent of  return tickets were sold from the counters to acquintances of officials. Some tickets have even been sold on the black market, they said.

This correspondent saw a huge crowd waiting in front of the booking offices. Of the eight booking offices, three were open, but there were no tickets.

Zakir Hasan, manager of the MV Sundarban launch, said all the cabin tickets from April 26 to May 5 were sold out. There is no special service as yet.

Md Azmal Huda Mithu, DD of river traffic and management, said seven triple-decker launches were scheduled to ply daily on the Dhaka-Barisal route from Thursday. “If needed, we will operate special service during the period,” he added.