All regional offices to issue e-passport from July
The Department of Immigration and Passport (DIP) is going to launch e-passport service at 10 more regional passport offices this month to ensure easy availability of electronic passports.
Presently, the service is available only at seven regional passport offices, including the divisional passport office in the capital's Agargaon.
Speaking to The Daily Star, e-passport Project Director Brig Gen Saidur Rahman Khan yesterday said, "We are gradually widening the e-passport service. We hope that we will be able to distribute e-passports from all regional passport offices across the country from July."
On January 22, Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina had launched the e-passport and e-gate services at a ceremony at Bangabandhu International Conference Centre.
Maj Gen Shakil Ahmed, director general of DIP, said 40,858 people submitted applications online for e-passport till yesterday. Of them, 13,878 completed the processes of taking photographs, fingerprint and iris scanning.
According to officials, the DIP has already handed e-passports to around 2,441 people and completed printing about 2,500 more.
The authorities are currently accepting e-passport applications only online. After submitting applications, the applicants get an automated date from the e-passport server.
An official involved in maintaining the server said if anyone wanted to submit an application now, he would get an appointment for June as all the slots till May were already booked.
On that specific date, the applicant would have to visit the regional passport office concerned for having those jobs done.
The project director said they were accepting applications online to maintain the serial of the appointment dates. "Receiving applications offline will take time as we still don't have enough trained manpower for e-passport service."
Presently, people can submit e-passport applications only under the general category. There is a provision for submission of applications under emergency category, but the DIP was not offering the service yet.
Under the general and emergency categories, applicants are supposed to get passports within 15 and 7 days.
Brig Gen Saidur said they were still facing some problems with the operation of the online software. "We expecting to start receiving applications under emergency category from next month."
He said if anyone needed an e-passport urgently, he/she must submit the related documents to the DIP showing the reason.
SERVICE FROM 10 MORE OFFICES
Officials said e-passport service was now available at the DIP's Agargaon, Jatrabari, Uttara, Cantonment, Secretariat and foreign ministry regional passport offices.
Only the government officials can submit e-passport applications from the Secretariat office. Besides, the office at the foreign ministry provides diplomatic passports.
The DIP on March 5 launched the e-passport service at its regional office in Gazipur. The service will be offered from three regional offices in Narsingdi, Manikganj and Munshignaj this week.
In Gopalganj and Mymensingh, the service will be launched on March 16 and 18 respectively.
According to officials, the service will be available at two passport offices in Chattogram division, and in Feni, Noakhali and Cumilla this month. The service is likely to be launched in all eight divisional cities within next month.
MANY APPLICANTS IN TROUBLE
Speaking to this correspondent, several e-passport applicants said they could not fill in the application form online due to some problems.
They said as they were filling in the form, error messages popped up. Besides, they didn't receive any confirmation message from the DIP after paying the applicable e-passport fees online using cards of different banks.
As a result, the applicants were forced to take help from different computer shops near the Agargaon regional passport office. They complained that they had to pay the shops Tk 300 to Tk 500 for submission of a single application online.
Asked about the problems, Brig Gen Saidur said they were aware about those. Three people were already arrested in this connection, he added.
The e-passport project director said filling up the form online was very easy, but some applicants were facing problems as they were not used to it.
Meanwhile, the e-gate service is not available yet for the general e-passport users.
Saidur said the service would be offered to all e-passport holders after a couple of months when there would be enough trained manpower.
There are two types of e-passports booklets with 48 and 64 pages, and their tenures are five years and 10 years.
Fees for e-passports varies from Tk 3,500 to Tk 12,000, depending on the number of pages and time for delivery. An additional 15 percent VAT is applicable with the fees.
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