Noman Mosharef :
Bangladesh Bank IT infrastructure such as server and website down pains the customers and bankers a lot.
The function of the central bank’s Bangladesh Automated Clearing House (BACH) for clearing cheques and settling transactions through EFT were suspended from April 13 due to a technical fault in the optical fibre cable between the data centre at the central bank’s Motijheel office and its data centre at Mirpur.
Although, BB’s Executive Director and spokesperson Md Serajul Islam said that they had restored interbank electronic fund transfer (EFT) system on Tuesday.
Although the interbank cheque clearing system was restored on April 18, EFT remained halted till Tuesday.
But, the technology experts said, such kind of fault or weakness of the country’s central bank is not acceptable.
Actually the weaknesses of Bangladesh Bank were exposed after its reserve heist in 2016. The criticism about the country’s central bank has been started from that incident.
Moreover, different technical problems became common issues for the Bangladesh Bank.
About the technical fault, BB said, IT infrastructure can be disrupted any time for any reason. There is none’s hands. Besides, we tried our best to solve the problems.
Serajul Islam said, Our IT infrastructure has been facing various disruptions since April 13 owing to the disconnection of an optical fibre cable between the data centre at the central bank’s Motijheel office and its data centre at Mirpur.
He said, after disconnection BTCL has repaired it immediately. But the problems continued for three days, he added.
Technologist Tousif Ahmed Sumon said, it took a few days to solve the problem due to inefficient design and weak connectivity. They didn’t really pay much attention when designing.
Now only seven departments of Bangladesh Bank, including the Payment System Department, ICT Infrastructure Maintenance and Management Department, Common Services Department and Forex Reserve & Treasury Management Department, are open amid the countrywide lockdown as banks remain open on a limited scale amid the lockdown.
Banking transactions hours have been set from 10am to 1pm and banks will remain open till 2:30pm except on weekly and government holidays.
About Tk 2.5 thousand crore interbanking transactions are held across the country per working day. The bankers also said that they are facing more pressure in a short time due to reduced working hours in the lockdown.
