Home ›› 24 Dec 2021 ›› Nation
Valiant freedom fighter (FF) SM Kamruzzaman, a resident of Paba upazila, is delighted to have services, extended by the Union Digital Centre (UDC) as he doesn’t need to travel miles now for withdrawing his FF allowance.
“Once I had to go to a bank nearly 10 kilometres (km) away and stand in a queue for a long time to withdraw FF allowance. But now I can collect my allowance from the number two Hujuripara UDC, which is located within the vicinity of my house,” he said.
Septuagenarian Kamruzzaman, also former Paba Upazila Muktijoddha Commander, said the FFs for their allowance need to fill up an online form of Management Information System (MIS) for which they could not but to go to town.
“We can now easily fill up the MIS form from the UDC at free of cost,” he said, adding apart from serving the FFs without free of cost, the UDC has made the people’s life easier rendering different services under a single umbrella.
The people now can do e-mutation of their land and pay land taxes, electricity bills, birth registrations and passport fees through the UDC, said Kamruzzaman, also a retired government officer.
As a freedom fighter, he said, “the basic objective of our independence was building a happy and prosperous ‘Sonar Bangla’. We are now enjoying the benefits after 50 years of independence”.
“Thanks to Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina and the a2i for taking one of her ten initiatives Digital Bangladesh. I hope the trend of expansion of digital activities that took place across the country in the last 12 years will continue in future,” Kamruzzaman.
A physically challenged college student Kusum Khatun, who received disability allowance from the government, said she had to go to upazila sadar to withdraw her allowance.
“It was very tough distress for me to go 10 km away and stand in a queue in Bank with my disable leg to get the allowance. But now I do not have to travel miles after miles since I can withdraw my allowance from the UDC through ‘Nagad’,” she said.
Kusum is also learning computers from the UDC at free of cost, which would help her earn remittance through freelancing staying at home.
A 62 year-old Md Mohiuddin, who came to the UDC for submitting passport fees, said the days of traveling to town and waiting in long queues for submitting different fees or withdrawing allowances have gone far away, thanks to the Prime Minister’s ‘Digital Bangladesh’ vision.
Like Kamruzzaman, Kusum and Mohiuddin, several hundred people come to the UDC to receive different services daily.
Hujuripara UDC Entrepreneur Md Ziaul Haque said on an average 250 people turn out to the UDC every day for different services like birth registration, electricity bill payment, land record, mobile banking, computer training, online form fill up, university admission form fill up, courier service, opening online Tax Identification Number (TIN) , agent banking service of Madhumoti Bank, e-mutation, submitting online land tax, passport fee submission, application for visas and other digital services.
As per Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina’s declaration of building ‘Digital Bangladesh’ on December 12, 2008, in her party’s election manifesto while the a2i of the Cabinet Division and the ICT Division with the support from the UNDP is mainly materializing the vision.
