From a correspondent in Dhaka
June 24, 2003
AFTER being kept on hold for 27 years, Mohammad Ismail has finally got his dream - a telephone connection to his home in the Bangladeshi capital, a newspaper reported.
Now 60 and retired, Ismail applied and paid the connection fee for a telephone line in May 1976, Manabzamin reported.
But the state-run monopoly Bangladesh Telegraph and Telephone Board lost his application and over the years his repeated requests for a line to be connected fell on deaf ears.
The telephone company suddenly “found” his application after Bengali-tabloid Manabzamin reported his plight last week. The company promptly connected his line on Saturday and even threw in a free telephone set.
“I am so happy. But I am a bit sad, also. When I applied, I was a young man of 33 and had dreams about owning my own telephone. Now all those dreams are gone. My children will use the phone now,” Ismail told the newspaper.
A phone company official told the Manabzamin they had not previously been able to give Ismail a telephone connection because of “technical reasons.”
Less than 10 percent of Bangladesh’s 130 million people have telephones, mostly due to insufficient phone lines, costly fees and often cumbersome connection procedures.
The Associated Press
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Bloody hell! That’s shocking. It’s amazing what a bit of publicity can do! That’s one good thing about shows like A current Affair and Today/Tonight. I find it terrible how people can be treated like that, it’s crazy.