Bangladesh now member of Unicode Consortium

4 July 2010, 18:00 PM

Bss, Dhaka

Bangladesh has become the institutional member of Unicode Consortium, an organisation that enables people around the world to use computers in any language. On being a member, Bangladesh has achieved the voting power to make necessary additions of Bangla letters to be used in various devices of science, information and communication technology (ICT) and to develop the language standard. Unicode is an internationally recognised system by which any language can be used in different digital devices like mobile phone and computer. Earlier, only India had the voting right in the consortium about the Bangla language. The ICT ministry with the personal interest of Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina has taken the initiative of being a member of the consortium last year. Bangladesh was declared an institutional member on June 30 this year following an application by the ministry on March 18, 2009. The Unicode Bangla text has already been initiated in many government offices under the supervision of `Accesses to Information (A2I)' programme, operated by the Prime Minister's office.