Mostafa Kamal Majumder
With the introduction of a new and upgraded set of computers the Internet facility offered by the the Jatiya Press Club to its members for collection and dissemination of news, articles, features, and networking through different social media sites have improved. The new set of computers has been donated by the Indian High Commission, Dhaka. The old computers donated by the Pakistan High Commission, Dhaka way back in 2008 have been replaced. Convener of the Media Centre sub-committee, Mainul Alam has played the key role in upgrading the Information and Communication Technology (ICT) facilities of the club having more than 600 permanent members.
Immediate past convener of the Media Centre sub-committee Nazmul Alam made tremendous efforts to help create the data base for the Jaitya Press Club website containing brief history of the club and bios of its members. He thus helped fulfill a long-felt demand. The website has now become functional and a computer with a touch-screen displaying the website has been introduced at the club lobby. Anybody can make use of this computer to know about the club and its members.
Another good piece of work has been done over the years by Nurul Hasan Khan, the former convener of the library sub-committee. He has created a CD corner (collection of compact disks) of reference books and materials at the library which the members can make use of for background research before writing news, articles or features.With the Internet nearly opening up the entire world, the expansion and upgradation of ICT facilities at the National Press Club is of great significance, because journalists can now remain more updated than ever before and serve the latest information on developments that are taking place near far both inside the country and the world at large. Of course ICT facilities are now commercially available elsewhere in Dhaka city and the country. Taking advantage of the explosion of information and communication technology thousands of online newspapers are now being published from all over Bangladesh. Journalists of today are lucky they are making use of the ‘Global Village’ created through the information super-highway.
On the ICT horizon Jatiya Press Club has an unparalleled glory. It has made mark by introducing the email-internet connection ahead of government ministries and departments, and even the premier business chambers located in the capital way back in 1994. At that time only some foreign non-governmental organisations and diplomatic missions had Internet connectivity through communications satellites. Drik Gallery had obtained one line from a European country via satellite and extended connections to a few organisations and institutions. Jatiya Press Club did buy one line from there to start its email service. Commercial Internet Service Providers were yet to come into existence. Earlier in 1993 the Jatiya Press Club library was upgraded. Introduction of computers to the library was first in the country. After that epic development, Library and Information Science students from Dhaka University and other institutions of higher learning used to come on visits to the Jatiya Press Club Library in batched to see for themselves and learn about usefulness of the system. Subsequently another Internet connection was taken from the Information Services Network (ISN).
Introduction of email connectivityto the library marked the demise of the telex booth installed beside the existing Conference Lounge. The telex booth was installed there to facilitate the transmission of news by the members of the overseas correspondents Association (OCAB) who otherwise had to go to the telex booth at the telephone exchange on western side of Gulistan street intersection. The email connectivity not only helped save time of the overseas correspondents, but revolutionalised the fidelity of their communications. This was because often telex messages sent or received by them did fail or give garbled copies due to noise at different stages from the encoders, transmission systems, the satellites to the decoders. These problems are not there with internet communication where there is no scope of getting garbled messages.
Moshtaq Ahmed, the former Library Assistant who was trained to supervise the computers and the email operations used to face a lot of pressure from the overseas correspondents to help send their messages. At the beginning there were two computers purchased with assistance from the Norwegian Agency for Development (NORAD) under their strengthening of democracy programme. The overseas correspondents used to queue up at the library counter for their turns to use the computers and the email facility. At times there were quarrels as they competed to send early copies with cent percent transmission accuracy. There was no second facility available to them in Dhaka city to transmit and receive news stories within a matter of minutes. It was a revolution and great excitement for them. They used the facility by paying for it. There was a membership fee of Taka 300, and separate fee for usage. But it should be placed on record that 12 great souls including the late Poet Sayyid Atiqullah, late Muzaffar Hossain Manik, Late Rouful Hasan, Zainul Abedin (Jong), Moinuddin Nasser among others paid the initial connection fee of Taka 12,000/- at the rate of Taka 1000 each to install the dial-up email line. Land telephone was very costly at that time and one line was installed for exclusively the library to run the email service at cost of Taka 35,000.
The upgraded library, reflecting the design of Artist Syed Lutful Huq, with a computer system was opened by late Mirza Golam Hafiz, then Law Minister of the government in 1993, and the email service by Tariqul Islam, then Minister for Information the following year. Subsequently during the second term of the BNP in government, Dr. Moeen Khan, Minister for ICT initially donated a couple of computers to help the creation of a Local Area Network (LAN) in the library to facilitate simultaneous computing by more than four persons, keeping one master computer (an IBM brand machine) earmarked for transmission of mails. The British High Commission had earlier enriched the system by donating two computers. Dr. Moeen later on donated more computers when the Media Centre was created as a unit separate from the library.
The inauguration of the internet facility at the club was a great exciting experience for all its members. Then Information Minister Tariqul Islam announced the inauguration at a jam packed conference lounge function. On the day of the inauguration it was realised that email and internet were topics unheard of before to many members. So to bridge the gap single-page leaflet was prepared from the computer system explaining the Internet, email and other facilities that can be obtained from the same. The distribution of the leaflet gave the minister, his personal staff, the print and electronic media journalists a sigh of relief. With the help of the leaflet they could easily interpret the news event.
At the beginning a number of members registered their names with the Jatiya Press Club email network. A lot of queries were made whether this facility could be extended to the Dhaka-based newspapers. In the subsequent two years commercial Internet Service Providers started coming up. Installation an operation an ISP at the club was not feasible.
At preswent in addition to the Internet connectivity extended to the Library and the Media Centre, Internet access from the ground and the first floors of the club has been facilitated with the installation of WiFi gadgets. Club members are availing this facility to browse the internet from their laptops or smartphones sitting at the lounge, the veranda or even the canteen.
(A senior journalist Mostafa Kamal Majumder did play the pioneering role in introducing the computer system and the internet connectivity to the Jatiya Press Club as convener of its library sub-committee.)
