Bangladesh’s telecom minister threatened ‘for move against VoIP’

Tarana Halim, state minister for posts and telecommunications division, has been threatened from a telephone call for her stance on re-registration of SIMs and banning illegal Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) business.

“I got the threat on Thursday over my official telephone at the secretariat to stop the government’s ongoing move,” she told The Daily Star yesterday.

“I have been asked to go slow on SIMs re-registration and banning illegal VoIP business,” the minister claimed. The caller also said there was no need to move fast on the issues, she said.

Tarana added that she had responded to the caller by saying, “Why should I go slow and who are you to give me such a directive?”

Answering to a query, she said from the caller’s tone, it seemed that the caller was an influential person.

“I am working as per the directives of the prime minister. Such threats will not stop my work. No-one can buy me,” Tarana said during the conversation.

While talking to this correspondent, the state minister said she didn’t care about the threat. It would rather help speed up her work.

She informed the law enforcement agencies about the threat, and the Rapid Action Battalion (Rab) is working to trace the number.

The government has recently taken an initiative to re-register the mobile numbers with proper identification as criminals have been using unregistered SIMs or SIMs registered with fake documents to commit crimes or run VoIP business.

Source: The Daily Star