In an unprecedented move, the parliamentary standing committee on housing and public works ministry has directly recommended a major development project—to build an offshore smart city claiming land from the Bay of Bengal—directly to the prime minister.
The offshore smart city project involves the development of a seaside bayview smart city on a stretch of 60 square kilometres of land connecting Sagarika Point of the Patenga Beach with the Bangabandhu Shilpa Nagar in Mirsarai. A consortium of two local companies—The Peninsula Chittagong and Mazumder Enterprise—and two Chinese companies— China Civil Engineering Construction Corporation (CCECC) and China Railway Design Corporation (CRDC)—are pushing for the approval of this project. In return for stake in the smart city, the consortium has also proposed to build a 20.5-kilometre metro rail line in the port city, which would cost about USD 2.2 billion.
Read more: BD: Bay of Bengal: A not-so-smart proposal for an offshore smart city
State minister for information and communication technology Junaid Ahmed Palak had said that the United Nations Development Program is formulating the ‘Digital Strategy 2022-25’, which will further strengthen the culture of innovation and boost the digital transformation of Bangladesh.
The state minister made the remark while attending a meeting with Robert Opp, chief digital officer of the UNDP, and Yolanda Jinxin Ma, head of digital policy and global partnerships of UNDP on Friday at the UNDP headquarters in New York, said a release on Saturday.
Read more: UNDP formulating strategy to boost Bangladesh’s digital transformation: Palak
The State Minister for Information and Communication Technology Zunaid Ahmed Palak has said that the implementation of e-government has revolutionized the country.
He said 52,000 websites, 7 million free text subscriptions in Corona, digital education platform, more than 1.3 million dependable export earnings, 333, 999 BD police, virtual courts, 4 crore e-documents, and 8,000 docs, including use of e-office management system in Corona. Through the Prime Minister’s participation in the meeting of the Cabinet ECNEC, etc., all e-government has been made possible.
Read more: BD: Implementation of e-government has revolutionized the country: Palak
Despite the expansion of the fourth generation (4G) telecom network, Bangladesh has scored low among digital societies in the Asia Pacific region, according to a global report.
It said Bangladesh outperformed only Pakistan among 11 nations studied in the report styled as 'Digital societies in Asia Pacific: Accelerating progress through collaboration' prepared by the GSMA.
Read more: Bangladesh scores low among Asia Pacific digital societies
Currently, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Financial Institutions Division and the Prime Minister’s Office has been using Boithok partly for their virtual meetings
Highlights
- On 23 April State-Minister of ICT Zunaid Ahmed Palak first disclosed Boithok
- Currently, only public organisations can use it
- It can host maximum 60 participants in a meeting
- It cannot host more than 30-35 meetings simultaneously
- The developers now working to increase the number of meetings and participants
Read more: BD: Boithok needs more time to become accessible to public