Tarana to meet facebook officials in Singapore

State Minister for Posts and Telecommunications Tarana Halim is going to sit with facebook officials in Singapore as part of her ongoing efforts to reach a deal with the social networking site for an admin panel in Bangladesh.

Tarana Halim recently said she planned to go to Singapore this month to meet facebook officials and visit Microsoft and some telecommunications companies.

"We are trying to reach a deal with facebook and set an admin panel of the social networking site in Bangladesh . . . I want to achieve the two goals in long term," she said.

Officials of posts and telecommunications division (PTD) said the state minister is scheduled to fly on January 10 for a two-week visit to Singapore and Malaysia.

Apart from the meeting with facebook, the state minister would hold talks with telecommunications and ICT ministers of the two countries and seek advice from them to introduce a high-performance business model for Teletalk to turn it into a profitable organization, the officials added.

State-owned mobile operator Telekom Malaysia is one of the leading mobile operators in Malaysia.

Tarana Halim, after assuming office of the state minister, had been communicating with the facebook authority to find a way to stop flow of disrespectful contents involving women, fake ID, threat and other misuses in the social networking site.

On November 30 last year, Tarana wrote to facebook citing examples of how the network was misused forcing several women in the country to commit suicide and how the miscreants uploaded objectionable contents often exposing girls of Bangladesh to extreme miseries.

Later on December 6, Facebook South Asian Public Policy Manager Deepali Liberhan and law-enforcement specialist in South Asia Captain Vikram Langeh sat with Home Minister Asaduzzaman Khan Kamal, Tarana Halim, State Minister for ICT Zunaid Ahmed Palak and officials of security agencies in Dhaka.

Replying to a query, Tarana Halim said facebook should implement its policy strictly in Bangladesh.

"Bangladesh is an independent country and everyone has to obey the law of the land . . . if faecbook implements its policy strictly in Bangladesh, violence against women and cyber crimes would come down significantly," noted the state minister.

Bangladesh is a big market for facebook and they know it, so facebook has interest in the country, she pointed out.

She said she also wants to see facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg in Dhaka.

Earlier on November 22, Bangladesh government imposed temporary restriction on facebook and few messaging and calling apps for security ground. It lifted the restriction on the social networking site on December 10.