"How bKash is beside poor people"?

“A true Incident”

“All conversation in this incident is at native language but it is published in English”

Some days back, during dusk hours, headed home from Mirpur-10 junction to Mirpur-14 by a rickshaw. Just a random rickshaw ride with my wife and my daughter. One thing led to another and a casual conversation started with the puller,

Hasan - “What’s your name, Mamu (Uncle)?’

Puller - “Jalil.”

Hasan - “Where are you from?’’

Puller- ”Barisal, sir.”

Hasan - ”How long have you been here in Dhaka?”

Puller - “Give or take at least it’s going to be around 11-12 years.”

Hasan - “Who are there in your family?”

Puller - “Two sons, one daughter, wife and my mother.”

Hasan - “That’s great. So, how often do you visit your roots?”

Puller -“Well, now I seldom hit the country roads. About 3/4 times a year. Around after 3/4 months or so.”

Hasan - “Good Lord! Is that so? How many times did you use to visit home before? Do you even send money there?”

Puller - “ Yes, surely I do. I used to visit my family every month in the past. Now it’s not much necessary. I still send money every month. Just the moment it’s required for any emergency, I send it instantly”

Hasan - “How come you send money so frequently despite visiting home so less?”

Puller - “Why? I use bKash”.

Hasan - “What did you do then when there were no bKash? It’s still a new thing.”

Puller - “That’s when I had to visit my family every month. And when I couldn’t, problems arose. I had to wait at the Sadarghat to find someone around my village, so that he could pass the money onto my family. It was hazardous.”

Hasan – “It is. It’s so hard to find someone for the task.”

Puller - “Oh please! No. Sometimes it was hard and sometimes it wasn’t hard to find people, but the problem was the transferring of money. Some used to spend the money on the way or used it for their own cause giving words to give it back after a while. Those days were hard. My family faced disasters at the times. They don’t now. We have bKash now…”

Thousands of stories like these prevail in our daily life, around the corners, in the market, at those tea stalls.

Dhaka alone has a population over 200 million. Not many of them are native. The native people are so mere in number. Mostly people here belong to either lower middle or low earning class whose families live far away from the capital. There used to be times when the only way of communication was letters. Even there used to be people who had the jobs of writing them. Time has changed. Now everything is confined in mobile phones. It’s not a device for only talking anymore. A lot can be done with it now a days.

Among all these, ’Mobile Banking’ is the most important. A good number of transactions around Bangladesh are now done through mobile banking. Reasons behind this are: mobile banking is easy to use, easy to access and the service is live 24/7. People can utilize its easy access whenever they want and easily meet their needs. This isn’t the only advantage they’re getting. It’s even used to recharge talk time to phone numbers.

Remittance coming from abroad, shopping, money transferring and carrying have become easier and safer now. Along with these, submission of school, college, university tuition fees has become easier and handy because of mobile banking. A good number of people of Bangladesh are now direct user of this ‘Mobile Finance Service’ (MFS). In this sector, conventional financial services are somewhat lagging behind in the process. There are some valid reasons behind these. It’s a normal thing that all sorts of transactions cannot be done through provisional banking only. It’s not even possible for uneducated or merely educated people of our country to get services from this directly. In that case, MFS has brought a revolutionary change through contributing in the economy. And most of these transactions get to the receivers’ doors through bKash, which has the potential to flourish the economy of a developing country like ours and is waiting for the blooming.

This waiting can come to an end if the executives in this very sector can come to a conclusion after discussing about its utilization and reconsidering their already taken firm and stiff initiatives. If the government observe the laws which have been imposed on MFS and considering the advantages and drawbacks of the system and take necessary initiatives to make the most out of it, all the glitches in the project can be eradicated easily.

It will be useful to mass people and many more would get benefitted from this. This surely will develop the economic condition of the country. For the sake of peoples’ betterment and country’s development economic sector’s enrichment is immensely necessary.

Still there is a huge opportunity to work in this sector which has significant impact to develop our economical status. Now, need proper execution and kind consideration of Government.