State Minister for ICT Palak finds customers complaints about Teletalk genuine

State Minister for ICT Zunaid Ahmed Palak has found genuine the complaints about state-run carrier Teletalk’s poor customer service.

The junior minister on Thursday called the customer care number from his phone during a parliamentary panel meeting and spoke to a staff member without disclosing his identity.

An official, who attended the meeting of Parliamentary Standing Committee on Posts, Telecommunication and ICT, told bdnew24.com that Palak made the call as questions were raised there about the quality of customer care services.

The official, who declined to named, said Palak spoke to the Teletalk staffer putting his phone on loudspeaker mode.

All, including the Teletalk officials present at the meeting, could hear the conversations.

The meeting was discussing the quality of customer care service of the lone state-run mobile-phone operator.

Several panel members observed that Teletalk was lagging behind other operators in offering better services.

But the Teletalk officials present at the meeting disagreed with the observation, prompting Palak to call the customer care number to find the truth for himself.

Identifying himself as a 3G internet user, he told the customer care representative about the problem he was purportedly experiencing and sought solutions.

But his request was left unattended.

Teletalk, however, sent a rejoinder after bdnews24.com ran the news.

In the rejoinder, sent by its Junior Executive (Marketing) Md Belal Uddin Sajib, Teletalk claimed the junior minister had called Bangladesh Telecommunications Co Ltd (BTCL) and not the mobile-phone operator.

But Palak confirmed bdnews24.com that he had called Teletalk.

After the meeting, Palak said he had earlier called state-run land phone operator BTCL and had similar experience.

He told bdnews24.com: “We want Teletalk, being a government organisation, to be service-oriented like the private operators. I made the call to know the real situation.”

Officials warned

Meanwhile, the committee resented failure of the officials to submit working papers in time as per the meeting’s agenda.

The relevant ministry is supposed to send the papers to Parliament Secretariat three days before the meeting.

But the papers for Thursday’s meeting were submitted only on the day of the meeting.

Committee Chairman Imran Ahmed told reporters after the meeting: “They (ministry officials) haven’t sent the papers (timely) despite several reminders.

“I told them I will tell them to get out of the meeting if the same happens again.”

The committee also expressed its dissatisfaction over the slow pace of optical fibre network laying across the country.

Imran presided over the meeting, attended among others by Kazi Firoz Rashid and Sharif Ahmed.

Officials of the relevant ministry, departments and agencies were also present.