Troubles mount as biometric re-registration of mobile-phone SIM cards ends Saturday

The re-registration of mobile-phone SIM cards with biometric data has entered the final hours with the huge rush triggering trouble for operators and subscribers alike.

The operators predict more sufferings from the temporary deactivation of biometrically unregistered SIM cards after the deadline ends on Saturday.

State Minister for Post and Telecommunications Tarana Halim, who had all but ruled out deferring the deadline, has hinted at more time for re-registration.

She will be briefing the media on where the authorities stand with the process during a conference on Saturday afternoon.

According to Tarana, 83.8 million of 130 million SIM cards were re-registered biometrically by Thursday morning while at least 10 million subscribers have allegedly failed to re-register as their fingerprints did not match.

On Friday, subscribers sweated it out at the biometric re-registration centres under a blistering sun in a rainless summer.Many of them alleged they could not re-register after waiting for hours on end.

The operators said they were facing problems accessing the Election Commission’s NID server to verify the fingerprints, which led to the failure to confirm the re-registration of many.

The EC’s NID authorities said the problem was not with their server, but with those of the operators. Tarana expressed displeasure over certain cases of noncompliance by the telecoms operators in installing their devices in the regional offices of the EC’s National Identity registration cell.

She was speaking to journalists after inspecting the re-registration process at Grameenphone Centre in the capital’s Farmgate area on Friday.

“I had requested the mobile operators to keep the devices also at the regional NID offices so that if the subscribers faced any problem here, they could go there for registration

“To be honest, the subscribers have faced some problems because of the operators’ failure to install the devices in the regional offices,” she said.

“There is no problem in the NID server. We’ll have to see whether there is a problem on the part of the operators,” she added.

About the deadline, she said, “There has to be a cut-off date. It cannot go on for eternity. But, we are always sensitive to the people’s problems. We’ll let you know by tomorrow (Saturday).”

While many alleged they could not re-register because of ‘server problems’, many others could be seen struggling to even enter the retail shops where biometric re-registration was arranged in Dhaka.

Customers outside Dhaka also faced trouble at customer care centres and retail points.

After visiting the registration centres in Dhaka throughout the day, Tarana sat with the mobile-phone operators and the NID authorities.

NID wing Director Syed Mohammad Musa told bdnews24.com after the meeting that there was no problem in their server.

“The operators alleged they did not get response to all their requests of verification. We said it just cannot happen. We didn’t get many requests from the operators,” he said.

According to him, the NID wing’s server can verify 6,000 fingerprints per second. “We are ready to tackle any kind of work,” he said.

The Association of Mobile Telecom Operators of Bangladesh (AMTOB) has blamed the additional pressure for the ‘complications’.

“The technicians of the operators and the NID authorities are working to resolve the problem,” AMTOB General Secretary TIM Nurul Kabir told bdnews24.com.

Tarana said she told the operators to fix their servers within the night. “I don’t want to hear any excuses,” she said.

She had earlier said the unregistered SIM cards would be deactivated temporarily from May 1 to serve as a warning. These numbers will be blocked permanently later.

The operators said the biometrically unregistered SIM cards would easily be identified.

But deactivating them temporarily would take long and reactivation even longer, they added.