Staff Reporter :
The Police has made the procurement of ‘Movement pass’ necessary for people to go out of homes during the full lockdown being enforced from today and will continue until April 21.
Competent quarters have posed a question as to whether this restriction was needed because none except those people who would have important business to do would go out as all adults in Bangladesh do have NID cards and some other papers like office ID cards to get themselves identified. People working in emergency services have been exempted from the requirement of passes
The government has decided for banks to operate between 10 am and 1 pm. Kitchen markets, grocery shops, dispensaries plus infrastructure construction work will remain out of purview of the lock down. People will have to go out also for undergoing Covid-19 tests as well as inoculation of vaccines.
The Police administration has made it known that each ‘Movement pass’ would be valid for three hours, none would get more than three passes a day and has introduced a Movement pass App for people to submit applications and get passes through. But within an hour the police website was jammed under the pressure of applications and people are not getting passes beyond the 30,000 issued at the beginning.
According to information made available last night 125,000 applications were submitted in the first hour and subsequently 15,000 applications were being submitted every minute.
To get ‘Movement passes’ an applicant would have to submit information about NID Card or Passport or Driving licence along with a photo and a telephone number.
The lockdown begins on the first day of the holy month of Ramzan which also marks the first day of the Bangla month of Baishakh. People will need to go out to purchase iftar and sehri items and also to celebrate Pahela Baishakh. The ‘Movement pass’ App has proved incapable of meeting the demands of this maga city of Dhaka having a population of over two crore.
The exercise is likely to turn futile because of inadequacy of capacity of the App. More importantly the requirement of pass for people who have urgencies to go out would turn out to be an unnecessary harassment which is going to help nobody.
