Telecoms disrupted as protests grip Bangladesh

DHAKA — Telecoms links were widely disrupted in Bangladesh on Friday, as the country grapples with protests against quotas for government jobs.

Sparked by anger against the controversial quotas, the protests, some analysts say, are also being fueled by economic woes, such as high inflation, growing unemployment and shrinking reserves of foreign exchange.

The government offered no immediate comment on Friday's severed communications, but said police in the capital Dhaka had barred all public meetings and processions indefinitely.

There were no flight disruptions at the main international airport, aviation site Flightradar24 showed.

Protesters blocked roads in many places and threw bricks at security forces, the English language website of the Bengali newspaper Prothom Alo said.

Thursday's violence in 47 of Bangladesh's 64 districts killed 27 and injured 1,500, it added, while Agence France-Presse put the day's toll at 32, citing a police spokesman.

The protesters demand that the "discriminator" quota system in all government jobs be abolished and as per the constitution, the quota will exist for the backward section at a reasonable level through the passage of law in parliament.

The system was reinstated by a separate court last month after it was halted in 2018.

The demonstrations resurfaced following the Supreme Court's affirmation in early July of a high court ruling that reinstated the quota system for government jobs.

Bangladesh's Supreme Court, which has set an Aug 7 date to hear an appeal by Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina's government against a high court order last month to reinstate the quota system scrapped in 2018, has suspended the lower court's order until the hearing.

On Thursday, the government said it was willing to hold talks with the protesters, but they refused.

Reeling from the ripple effects of the Russia-Ukraine conflict, Bangladesh got a $4.7 billion bailout from the International Monetary Fund in January 2023. In June, it got immediate access to IMF loans of about $928 million for economic support and about $220 million to fight climate change.

Agencies - Xinhua