Is Tomorrow Lockdown? Use This Website to Find Out.
Remember when hartals were a thing? They would last from anything between a day to an entire week. At one point, hartals were being announced so frequently that people at home could no longer keep track of them.
It has been a while since we have experienced anything like that. Now, we face an even bigger issue that wants us to stay indoors – lockdowns. However, these lockdowns are necessary for public safety.
However, over the last few weeks, we have seen the term "lockdown" being thrown around a lot. We have had everything from shutdowns to strict lockdowns. And as a result, the term (and at times, the directive) has lost its credibility to some extent.
As the government called for the "strictest" lockdown to date, that is to last up to July 7, we need to take them more seriously. And to help us keep track of services we can and cannot avail of during this lockdown, there is a new website.
www.istomorrowlockdown.com tells its visitors about the current duration and state of the lockdown, and what services are available for them. There is also a part that further explains the status assigned to each type of service so that people can better understand the situation.
"It all started when in a Messenger thread, my friend Muhammed Asif Khan, co-founder and CEO of Alpha Catering, suggested the idea of an app where real-time updates of the lockdown derivatives were easily available," says Ishmam Chowdhury, who co-developed www.istomorrowlockdown.com, and works in corporate strategy at a telecommunications company.
"I instantly fell in love with the idea, and we both remembered the website, Is Tomorrow Hartal, which became quite useful a few years back, and decided to get onto making the website Is Tomorrow Lockdown."
"We now have a website that has a Bangla as well as an English version," adds Ishmam. "It is built in such a way that we can easily update the lockdown information using a spreadsheet on Google Sheets."
The website has a very simple user interface. It is basically a table with three columns that tells you about a specific service type, whether or not it is operating, and further explanation regarding its status, if necessary.
For example, there's a row for restaurant services. To the right, it mentions "Home Deliveries Only" with a further explanation of "8 AM to 8 PM". Simple, minimalist, and effective.
Visitors can switch between the English and Bangla versions of the site, as well as a dark and light colour scheme. The information for istomorrowlockdown.com is sourced from government-run websites of the Civil Aviation Authority of Bangladesh (CAAB) website and the website for the Cabinet Division.
Ishmam hopes that the website will be of genuine help to people during these trying times.