DHAKA, July 24, 2024 (BSS) - The life of the countrymen today started returning to normalcy as national holiday ended and government relaxed curfew, imposed to control violence since last Tuesday, for seven hours (from 10am to 5pm).

All the public and private establishments, including garment factories, banks and stock exchanges, have been reopened and employees and workers have joined their respective works spontaneously since the morning.

Most of the apparel factories, particularly situated in Dhaka, Narayanganj, Savar and Gazipur, have been reopened following a meeting of the country's business leaders with Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina on Monday.

Members of the law enforcing agencies remain vigilant at different points of the city to thwart any unpleasant incident.

Broadband internet was restored to specific areas, including diplomatic and commercial zones, on Tuesday after five days of outage.

But social networking site facebook and free video sharing website YouTube are yet to be opened.
 
Earlier, State Minister for Posts and Telecommunications Zunaid Ahmed Palak in a meeting held at the Bangladesh Telecommunication Regulatory Commission (BTRC) office yesterday afternoon told about partial restoration of the broadband internet from last night.
 
Though garment and textile factories started to reopen yesterday after a four-day pause, all factories in the garment manufacturing hubs were reopened today.

Even, launch and bus services on long route have been resumed to facilitate the movement of people.

But city dwellers have to face severe traffic congestion due to movement of huge number of vehicles, including bus, private car, CNG-run auto-rickshaw, motorcycle and rickshaw.

Nahidul Islam, an employee of waste management department of the Dhaka North City Corporation, while talking to BSS, said, "Today, I get late in my office due to severe traffic congestion at various points of the city."

"But, I am happy that normalcy started returning to our life," he added.

Abdul Barek, a businessman in the city's Islambagh area, said, "After a week I have opened my factory, which is great relief for me and my employees."

He expressed hope that everything would be normal as the government took appropriate measures to make people's life normal.

As students' protest over the quota-based hiring system in the government jobs turned violent, the government announced a curfew on Friday night and deployed armed forces across the country.

During the unrest, miscreants torched government as well private establishments and hundreds of vehicles.