From seven in the morning on Saturday, 12 March 2022, people from thirty villages in the Madhupur forest of Tangail gathered on the field of St Francis church in Gaira. Children wore traditional Garo dress; young people came back from Dhaka, Chattogram and Rajshahi for the day. The occasion was a mobile phone signal. For the first time, 4G internet reaches inside the mud houses of Gaira, Gachhabari and Idilpur, and the freelancers who used to tie modems to trees can work at a desk.
What happened in three weeks
Prothom Alo reported on 18 February and 27 February that around 350 young Garo people trained by Nokrek IT Institute were earning from overseas clients on 2G and 3G signal available only outdoors. Grameenphone chief executive Yasir Azman read it. Within days the operator surveyed 23 villages and put up a temporary base station in Gaira, which now covers a wide area with 4G. A permanent tower needs permission from the Forest Department, because the villages sit inside a reserved forest; Azman said the company would build it as soon as the administration agreed.
"Grameenphone first gave people the ability to talk," Azman told the crowd of more than a thousand after Garo elders placed the community's highest crown, the kutub, on his head. "Now our goal is social empowerment. Seeing what training at Nokrek IT Institute has meant here, I am proud and moved."
The man who started it
Subir Nokrek told the gathering how it began: freelancing training in 2017, a first job worth $75, then more work than one person could handle, so he trained others from his own courtyard. Nokrek IT Institute now has five branches, in Gaira, Dhaka, Mymensingh, Gazipur and Jamalpur, and has trained more than 5,000 people. Freelancers Bappu Mree, Himalaya Henry Nokrek and Paritosh told the chief executive what the past years had been like: no signal even under the trees, files sent to foreign clients from open fields at night.
Why a temporary tower is not the end
- A temporary BTS is a generator-backed unit on a trailer; coverage and capacity are limited until a permanent mast is built.
- Fibre-based broadband, which freelancers need for video calls and large uploads, still runs at 2-3 Mbps in the area.
- Forest Department permission for permanent towers is the bottleneck for dozens of similar villages across Madhupur and the Chattogram Hill Tracts.
The event closed with the launch of writer Rahitul Islam's book Call Center-er Aparajita, published by Prothoma. Joyenshahi Adivasi Unnayan Parishad president Eugene Nokrek, Grey Dhaka's Gousul Alam Shaon and Grameenphone's head of communications Khairul Basher also spoke.
