Govt unsure how many expatriates without MRPs
The International Civil Aviation Organisation's deadline for terminating the use of hand-written passports expires today but the Bangladesh government does not seem to know how many of its expatriates were yet to receive Machine Readable Passport (MRPs).
Over 11 lakh Bangladeshi expatriates were yet to get the MRPs, Foreign Minister AH Mahmood Ali had told parliament on Thursday. But, the Department of Immigration and Passport (DIP) Director General NM Zeaul Alam yesterday told reporters that only 2 to 2.5 lakh expatriates do not have MRPs.
“We cannot explain why the figure would be 11 lakh as we do not have any record of them. Possibly, they have migrated without any passports or by other means,” he said at his office in the DIP headquarters in Agargaon.
Some 1.64 lakh expatriates in Saudi Arabia, 65,000 in the United Arab Emirates and some 3,500 in Malaysia were without MRPs, Zeaul claimed.
According to ICAO's rules, none would be allowed to travel with hand-written passports after today.
Without MRPs, the foreign currency earners would face trouble in renewing their work permits and getting work visas. They might even lose their jobs and face deportation.
However, Zeaul claimed that the people with old passports would not face too many problems.
“They [expatriates] will not face any problem in staying or working abroad,” the DIP head claimed, adding that they would be able to come home using their old passports. “They can collect travel permits too from the mission before visiting home, if they face any problems.”
Zeaul, however, admitted that the expatriates must have MRPs when they depart Bangladesh.
More than half of the expatriates who did not get MRPs are working in Saudi Arabia, the UAE and Malaysia where the government signed contracts with IRIS Corporation for the enrolment of the Bangladeshis and distribution of MRPs last year.
Sources in the foreign missions, the DIP and the home ministry say that IRIS, the DIP and the home ministry were to blame for the possible consequences the expatriates might face. They said they together had delayed the issuance of MRPs and pushed the Bangladeshis into uncertainty.
They said IRIS had totally failed to do its jobs in the three major labour receiving countries. After its failure to complete the enrolment of the expatriates, the company is now not paying the money it owed the government and declining to distribute thousands of MRPs.
Mission officials had repeatedly asked the home ministry and the DIP to mobilise IRIS to complete its enrolment job and distribute the MRPs.
Thousands of migrants paid fees and service charge to the company for getting their MRPs in Saudi Arabia and Malaysia several months ago but IRIS did not bother to handover their passports.
In Malaysia, its contract with the Bangladesh government had ended while two other contracts in Saudi Arabia and the UAE would end in December and January.
But the government is reluctant to take any action against the Malaysian company as a section of officials of the ministry and the DIP were backing IRIS.
The government does not seem to have a plan for giving MRPs to the expatriates either.
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