Customers stage sit-in protest in front of Evaly office
Around 30 customers have started staging a sit-in protest in front of the office of controversial e-commerce platform Evaly on Monday night.
The agitated customers were seen holding a banner saying - "We want our bikes. We have not received the deliveries in last 157 days. Evaly, deliver our bikes."
Mohiuddin Chowdhury Shuvo, convener of the protest, said they were waiting from 4pm to meet Evaly chairman.
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"Later we arranged a sit-in programme from 9pm and we will continue this protest until getting our products," he added.
None from Evaly talked to the protesting customers as of filing the report at 9:50pm.
Besides, in some other Facebook and Whatsapp groups, many customers have called for besieging the Evaly office on 11 August demanding delivery of their pending orders and refund.
Though the government has relaxed the virus restrictions and asked to reopen all government and privates offices from 11 August, Evaly CEO Mohammad Rassel, in a Whatsapp group, informed customers that their office will not be reopened due to Covid-19 situation.
Meanwhile, the commerce ministry has formed an inter-ministerial committee to decide the future of e-commerce platform Evaly.
The commerce ministry last July directed Evaly to submit information – from its inception to 15 July – regarding the money the e-commerce platform had charged their customers, payments made to merchants, outstanding payments, and the company's plans to pay them.
Evaly however failed to submit the data to the authorities concerned within the 1 August deadline, and requested another six months for this purpose.
In an inspection report last June, the Bangladesh Bank said Evaly took Tk214 crore from their customers up until 14 March this year, but it did not deliver the products to them. Besides, the platform is yet to pay Tk190 crore to its merchants.
Evaly's current assets are worth only Tk65 crore, which means that the platform would only be able to pay 16% of its dues to customers and merchants with their total assets.
