Dhaka: State Minister for Posts and Telecommunications Tarana Halim on Monday said Facebook authorities will delete the fake accounts registered using the names of members of parliament (MPs) and VVIP personalities of Bangladesh.

‘Once we provide the URL (Uniform Resource Locator) of those fake accounts of MPs and VVIPs to Facebook authorities, they’ll shut down those,’ Tarana said while talking to journalists at her office.

Posts and Telecommunications Ministry will send a letter to the Speaker of Parliament to take an initiative to verify the official Facebook accounts of the MPs in order to identify the fake ones, she added.

The authorities of the social media giant assured the government of providing this assistance during a meeting with Tarana Halim on 23 March in London and on 30 March in Singapore.

Tarana said the Facebook authorities will also take some initiatives to avert violence against women on the social media site as soon as possible.

The junior minister suggested the Facebook authorities to arrange a slot where the women account holders can lodge allegations if they are harassed by any Facebook user so they can easily find out the violent contents and take actions against the content publishers.

Meanwhile, several law enforcement agencies sent a proposal to the Posts and Telecommunications Ministry through Home Ministry to make a ‘Focal Point List’ of the law enforcers concerned who will contact the Facebook authorities seeking information of any user while conducting an investigation, she added.

Officials of the widely used social networking site will sit in a meeting with Bangladeshi law enforcers in Singapore very soon, Tarana said.

She said the government got satisfactory responses from the Facebook authorities while submitted complaints in last one and half years. ‘They assured us of extending their helping hands in combating militancy‐related issues through social media,’ Tarana added.