Bangladesh: Many MPs cannot use e-mail

Dhaka, July 12, 2014 (New Age): The parliament secretariat’s e-mail notice programme proved futile as less than half a dozen out of the 350 lawmakers regularly open e-mail and many of them cannot use e-mail. The system was introduced in 2012 to digitalise the notification as there were widespread allegations of missing or unusual delay in reaching important notices and letters send by the parliament secretariat to the lawmakers, said the Jatiya Sangsad Secretariat information technology director, Abdur Razzaque. He said that a short message service was also introduced simultaneously to send notifications to the lawmakers. Parliament secretariat sources said that usually they sent all notifications like notices on summoning parliament, standing committee meetings, order of the day and working papers. Voters from any constituency can also contact their lawmakers on any issue. The sources, however, said that not more than half a dozen of the 350 lawmakers regularly opened e-mails sent from the parliament secretariat and most of the lawmakers could not use e-mail. They said that although the SMS service had some impact, but it was hard to send all the notices in through SMS because of limit of text message sizes. Some of the lawmakers, however, told New Age that they were not getting e-mail or SMS timely. Amatul Kibria Keya Chowdhury (women seat 328, Sylhet) said that she received neither SMS nor e-mail timely and that was why she missed some programmes arranged by the parliament secretariat. Imran Ahmed (Sylhet-4), one of the few lawmakers habituated with e-mail notice system, however, said that he regularly received the notices and letters issued by the secretariat through e-mail.  He said that his colleagues should be accustomed to the system and help materialising the digitisation. The chief whip of the opposition in parliament, Tajul Islam Choudhury, said that he was not habituated to the use of e-mail. ‘My private secretary sometimes opens it and he informs me about the notices,’ he said. Awami League lawmaker Md Manzurul Islam Liton (Gaibandha-1) said that he was not aware of the matter. The speaker, Shirin Sharimin Chaudhury, said that she would take initiative so that lawmakers could become accustomed to the system.