Deliver MRPs without delay

Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina yesterday asked the passport officials to ensure timely delivery of passports without any delay and harassment.

"Make sure that the passport seekers get their passports in time. Do not harass them," she said while inaugurating the issuance of Machine Readable Passport (MRP) from 33 regional passport offices over a videoconference with officials at Laxmipur from her official residence Ganabhaban.

Regional passport offices at Laxmipur, Madaripur, Shariatpur, Rajbari and Naogaon will now be able to deliver MRP.

Apart from these five offices, currently 34 regional offices in 31 districts and 48 embassies/high commissions are delivering MRP. These offices have delivered 9 million MRPs so far.

The prime minister also opened another 28 passport offices across the country.

"Soon the people of 64 districts of the country will get their MRP from their own districts," she said.

To ease the passport issuing procedure, the government has integrated the MRP with the software of national identity card (NID) of Election Commission. "This will make the passport delivery procedure easier," said the PM.

She also said the government had selected five private banks to receive the money through online banking to make the deposit of passport fee easier. "People can deposit their fees in these private banks through credit card, debit card, mobile banking and directly in the bank booths," she added.

People willing to go abroad for business, education and treatment purposes were facing lot of difficulties and the government, with the assistance of the Army, solved the problem by introducing MRP, she said.

Director of the MRP project Brigadier General Masud Redwan gave a short description of the activities of the project while State Minister for Home Asaduzzaman Khan Kamal and local MPs spoke from Laxmipur.