The Dhaka Times Desk The A2I Bill was introduced in the Great National Parliament. Following the objection of an opposition MP, the Grand National Assembly referred the bill to the Parliamentary Standing Committee for detailed discussion.
June 7, 2023 –
We note that the final bill does not reflect the decisions of many stakeholder meetings held earlier with the industry.
June 11, 2023 –
We have written to the Honorable Speaker of the Great National Assembly to inform the matter. We request you to arrange for our speech to be heard.
June 18, 2023 –
A meeting of the Parliamentary Standing Committee on Postal Telecommunications and Information Technology was held at Jatiya Sangsad Bhawan Hon'ble Minister Mustafa Jabbar and Hon'ble State Minister Junaid Ahmed Palak were present among others. And as well as 5 ICT trade association presidents were invited to participate in the meeting
3 issues were unanimously decided in the on camera record meeting
1. E2I cannot participate in any transactions
2. A2I cannot form a company. Omission of section 21 in favor of this decision
3. Having representatives from all ICT trade associations on the A2I Board.
On my Facebook, I thanked and informed all the Parliamentary Standing Committees with a status on June 18.
July 5, 2023 –
The A2I Bill was passed in the Great National Assembly. And we were shocked to note that the decision taken at the Standing Committee meeting on June 18 not to allow A2I to form a company remained. That is, section 21 remained in the bill.
This trend is very much at odds with the ICT industry. When we drew the attention of the Honorable Minister of State for ICT yesterday, he said that this is probably a clerical mistake.
We are not experts on how to amend a law after it is passed. However, canceling it is very important to keep the development of this ship moving. In the interests of digital and smart Bangladesh, this clause needs to be canceled - we discussed this in the standing committee meeting and took a unanimous decision
The question really remains now, who is A2I for? Why is there no performance appraisal or audit of their activities in the last 15 years? Why should A2I be saved and strengthened by legislation now?
Only research and development will do - this is what we have been told time and again in various meetings. Still, we repeatedly notice that business or companies are trying to be kept for some invisible interest.
In such a situation, we are requesting the kind attention of all those concerned with the ICT industry, Hon'ble Prime Minister, Hon'ble Speaker, Hon'ble Chairman of the Parliamentary Standing Committee, Hon'ble Minister of State for ICT to take appropriate measures to repeal Section 21 from the A2I Bill.
Is it still impossible to organize a public hearing on some other issues of the law?
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