RIYADH, 29 June 2004 — Callers from the Kingdom are finding it impossible to get through to Bangladesh, expatriates from the flood-hit country say. The problem has existed for several months, they say, but has now apparently reached crisis level.
Saad Al-Qahtani, Saudi Telecom’s PR manager, admitted there had been “some difficulty” in reaching mobile phones in Bangladesh since the service provider there does not give instant connections to the mobile phones at that end. But he said there was “no problem at all in getting connected to land phones in Bangladesh from any mobile or landline in the Kingdom.”
Members of the community do not share his upbeat assessment. According to Shajahan Bhuiyan, a Bangladeshi businessman, it takes nearly half an hour to get a connection to the country “and even if you do get through it ends up being a wrong number,” he said. Thus after several attempts to call Dhaka callers get through to Sylhet, he said.
He said callers will get through to the right number only after several connections to the wrong one, for which they have to pay.
Mohammed Shafiqul Alam said the problem has got worse over the last three months, “It takes at least half an hour to reach a phone in any part of Bangladesh,” he added.
Another expatriate who spoke on condition of anonymity observed that there is no problem with calls to Bangladesh from call cabins or using official call cards in the Kingdom.
“But there is no way to call home that easily from a landline. And with a mobile phone it’s impossible,” Dr. Ariful Rahman said.
He said he raised the matter with the head of the Dhaka’s parliamentary committee on telephone services but to no avail. “There is an obvious shortage of circuits in Dhaka. The Bangladeshi government has to increase the number of lines,” he said.
“With this phone, you can call any part of the world but Bangladesh,” said Mohammed Raju, a tea boy in a private company, said holding up his mobile phone.
Sources at the Bangladesh Embassy also blamed technical faults in Bangladesh rather than the Kingdom. An STC team visited Dhaka over the matter but without success, they said.
