Internet shutdown, sufferings in availing services

The electricity went off at the house of Mitali Rani Paul from Chelopara in Bogura Sunday morning. She is a prepaid metre user. She went to the local office of Northern Electricity Supply Company (NESCO) around 11:30 am and waited in queue until 3:00 pm but could not get the recharge. At a stage Mitali had fallen sick there due to severe heat.

Thousands of consumers like Mitali, who use prepaid metres for electricity and gas, have been sufferings indescribably due to the countrywide internet shutdown for nearly three days. People agitated in a few areas over this as well.

Not only gas or electricity, people are not getting many other emergency services due to this unprecedented internet shutdown in the country, a situation the authorities say appeared due to the damage in the main server at Mohakhali in the country during the violent protests over quota system in the government jobs early this week.

Almost all the emergency services, including dealings online, mobile recharge, e-commerce, f-commerce, freelancing, buying air tickets, online-based entertainment media (OTT, YouTube), and education have either come to a complete halt or facing a significant impediment.

While speaking to the media Sunday, state minister for ICT affairs Zunaid Ahmed Palak said he could not specify the date and time of restoration of the internet connection.

Users of prepaid gas and electricity metres were seen waiting in long queues for recharges at the designated spots in the city Sunday. They are not even able to pay the bills using manual system of bKash or Nagad when the country is going through a long patch of internet shutdown.

Prothom Alo correspondents from Tongi, Bogura, Brahmanbaria, Khulna and Dinajpur also saw such long queues in front of the power offices. Many expressed their grievances for not being able to recharge even after waiting at queues for a long time.

“Overall passing through a hard time. That’s why I have come here at DESCO office but facing sufferings due to long queues here as well,” said Md. Zahid Khan, from Sector 14 of Uttara in Dhaka, who has a burqa factory with 10 workers.

But he had to shut the factory Saturday as his prepaid electricity metre has run out of money. There is no electricity at his residence either.

Due to the internet shutdown all types of online-based dealings have been stopped. App-based bank and mobile financial service (MFS) users are the worst victims. They are thronging at the shops even for mobile recharge.

Many people are facing hassles in buying and selling things as most of the point of sales (POS) are inactive due to this rather prolonged internet shutdown.

Relevant people said there are several thousands of e-commerce and f-commerce establishments around the country that deals products and services worth Tk 500 million every day. But everything has come to a halt.

“Our operation is closed now due to internet shutdown,” said Waseem Ali, CEO of e-commerce shop chaldaal.

Almost all the business enterprises have been preparing their invoices and VAT challans digitally for the last few years. All the information of the supply sector is also being stored digitally. But everything facing a hindrance now. Meanwhile, the export and import through the ports have also come to a halt.

Speaking about this, AC consumer brands business director Kamrul Hasan said, “These days no internet is equivalent to not present at office. Business activities are highly dependent on internet now.”

He said nowadays digital challans are prepared centrally, then those are downloaded from factories and distribution centres and the products are supplied. But the traders were facing hassles in all those activities due to internet shutdown, he added.

People involved with the information and communication technology (ICT) said the size of the country’s ICT sector is about Tk 200 billion. Around

150,000 freelancers are also working in the sector.

Speaking about their woes, Muhammad Monir, CEO of BDCalling IT, a freelancing organisation, told Prothom Alo, “We can’t communication with our foreign customers due to internet shutdown. Currently we have works of US $5 million. Maybe half of those will be cancelled.”

Bangladesh Association of Software and Information Services (BASIS) president Rasel T Ahmed said the ICT sector was incurring a loss of Tk 700-800 million a day. The sector will face a far reaching shock as the foreign buyers were losing their confidence.

Reiterating this, the top executives of various ICT firms also said maybe they would get over the loss in regular dealings but the real shock would be in the foreign investment as the foreigners would not be interested to invest in Bangladesh any time soon.

Meanwhile, the Editors’ Council has demanded restoration of internet in the fastest possible time as the publication of all the online news portals has stopped completely and the broadsheets are facing obstacles in printing the newspapers.

* The report, originally published in the print edition of Prothom Alo, has been rewritten in English by Shameem Reza