Star Diary

Machine-readable Passport

The much hyped machine-readable passport (MRP) and how it can digitalise Bangladesh and solve all our problems seemed bleak to me when I presented my four-year-old daughter's newly received MRP at the immigration counter at Shahjalal International Airport. I was traveling to India with my family and except for hers, all of our passports were of the previous version. Skimming through the pages, the immigration officer gave me a suspicious look and started asking me a series of questions, “Is this your daughter? Where is it written? Where is the address?” I tried to make him understand that the rest of the information must me coded inside the document. He took an all-knowing air and said “Oh, I know it is only for traveling to India right?” It took me a while to convince him that it is an international passport, and that I am not a fraud and this really sleek book with only one page of information is actually the newly issued MRP. At last he was convinced and with a broad grin informed me that it is the first time he has seen a machine-readable passport. The event was repeated at the Kolkata airport's immigration counter and instead of making life easy the MRP seemed to bring in more harassment for my daughter and me. What strikes me is why immigration officers should be so unfamiliar with an object that forms such an important part of travel documents. I wonder whether the government has provided training to immigration officers regarding the verification of machine-readable passport.
Tahmina Rahman Rimi
Mirpur

Digital Cheating!

It was 7 in the morning, on the first day of last Ramadan. I was sleeping after having my sehri at midnight. Suddenly my cell phone started ringing. It was an unknown number. I felt annoyed but picked up the phone. The person from the other end said, "Congratulations! You have just won 13 lakh taka from our promotional campaign. Please recharge and send 600 taka to this number immediately in order to claim your prize." I rebuked the person profusely and said," Why do you guys cheat people in this way? Is there no other good way of earning money?" But what the person said to this was shocking for me. He said, "Sir, this is digital cheating! Everyday we cheat many people, especially people from rural districts who are ignorant about this. You must be a Dhakaite. So infact I did dial the wrong number!" I urge the mobile operators to kindly address this problem more seriously so that innocent people don't fall prey to these digital cheaters!
MS
Dhaka

Snake Attack II

One day, my friends and I met up at Dhanmondi Lake for tea and snacks. While we were there, two women came up to us demanding money. We ignored them at first, but they refused to leave us alone. One of my friends lost patience and spoke to them a little harshly, asking them to go bother someone else. The women became furious and took out small snakes from the boxes they were carrying and claimed they were poisonous and they would attack us with them if we did not pay up. Frightened, we did as they asked and they cursed at us as they walked away. I have heard of similar incidents happening all over the city and I think it is time something is done about this.
Md Saiful Islam
Department of Mathematics
Dhaka College

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