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The shutdown for security reasons spelled trouble for travellers who required vaccine certificates
Published : 19 Aug 2023, 08:45 PM
The government has reopened its Surokkha web portal for COVID-19 vaccination after a 16-day shutdown over security reasons.
The shutdown spelled trouble for travellers who required vaccine certificates, along with those seeking registration for vaccination.
Abdullah Al Rahman, a programmer at the ICT Division, told http://bddnews24.com on Saturday that upgradation for the portal was carried out to ensure the security of such a massive database, which was created three years ago.
“As it has a huge database, upgrading the portal while keeping it open may cause files to go missing. This is why we shut it down,” he said.
The Management Information System wing of the Directorate General of Health Services collects information about vaccination and issues vaccine certificates.
The shambolic security protocols of the databases maintained by the Bangladesh government made headlines recently after an American tech news site broke the story about how a cybersecurity expert could access the private and confidential information of millions of Bangladeshis on a government portal.
PEOPLE’S AGONY
On Thursday, a handful of people suffering due to the shutdown visited its office in Dhaka’s Mohakhali.
“We don’t have anything to do with the shutdown. The server is down whenever we try to access Surokkha,” said an official there.
Afrin Mim, an employee of a private firm in Dhaka, said she needs to travel to China on Aug 28 on an official trip.
She needed to amend information in the vaccine certificate and following corrections made in her national ID card.
Her passport number will also have to be added to the vaccine certificate, but the shutdown made her worried over the required documents for the trip.
Ovi, another traveller who identified himself with a single name, said he needed the certificate as required by the airline and airport authorities.
“I haven’t got the certificate although my flight is scheduled for the end of the month.”
Nilufar Chowdhury from Rangpur came for the vaccine certificate required for medical assessment to travel to Canada, where her daughter lives.
“We tried for some days but could not download the vaccine certificate,” she said.
Professor Dr Shahadat Hosaain, a director of the DGHS, said the ICT Division told them the Surokkha server was shut down because of security threats .
“People are suffering, but we don’t have anything to do,” he said.
