'6.5m people have left Dhaka'

At least 6.5 million (65 lakh) mobile phone users have left Dhaka as of Thursday to celebrate the Eid-ul-Fitr with their families, a mobile phone operator has revealed after analysing their database and call trends.

The number is based on unique users. It means people who use multiple SIM cards have been counted as one person.

Same operator on Monday said that about 2.5 to 2.8 (25 lakh to 28 lakh) million mobile phone users had left the capital city Dhaqa.

As the survey is based on SIM card in mobile phone, children and the people who don’t use the phones remained out of its purview.

So, this survey hazards a guess to us on how many people have left the Dhaka city centering Eid-ul-Fitr.

In a Facebook post on Wednesday, post and telecommunication minister Mostafa Jabbar claimed over 6 million people have left the Dhaka city between 4 May and 11 May.

Of them, over 4.9 (49, 24992) million people are Grameenphone users followed by 5, 28,393 of Robi, 4, 53,913 of Banglalink and 1, 64,803 users of TeleTalk.

However, the numbers of homegoers this year are much lower than the last year. Officials at the National Telecom Monitoring Centre (NTMC) told Prothom Alo that 11 million (1 crore 10 lakh) mobile phone users left Dhaka by 20 April in 2020 after the government had declared a general holiday from 26 March to prevent coronavirus infection.

It could not be confirmed whether this number is based on unique users or not.

There are no updated statistics on how many people live in Dhaka.

According to the Bangladesh Bureau of Statistics (BBS) and the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) published in 2016, the population in and around the capital Dhaka was about 17 (1 crore 70 lakh) million. A large portion of this population goes to the villages on the holy Eid-ul-Fitr and Eid-ul-Azha.