Passports easy to come by

THE disconcerting news of militants and anti-state elements being able to easily procure Bangladeshi passport speaks of the slipshod manner in which passport issue procedures are being followed. It is a pity that those who are involved in the process of passports issue appear to deliberately disregard the harmful consequences of circumventing laid down procedures for petty personal gains that allows international terrorists to travel in and out of the country with Bangladeshi identity and passports. Thanks to the fact that some of these terrorists have been arrested, but for whose confession we would have been perhaps ignorant of the grievous scope of the matter. The issue should cause relevant agencies to sit up and act immediately
In the matter of issue of passports there are a few imperatives that we suggest are a must for strengthening the system while making it difficult for unwanted elements to acquire the same.
Firstly, issue of machine readable passports (MRP) should be accelerated so that all old passports are replaced quickly. And although the new system would be helped very much by the personal information on the national identity card (NID) there is need to undertake police verification of all passport holders to obviate the chances of miscreants, terrorist and anti-state elements misusing the system. In this regard all must be issued with NID as quickly as possible.
On the matter of ascertaining the credentials of the applicants, it is a regrettable reality that the biggest flaw has been in the police verification itself, and we feel the police administration has much work to do to make it foolproof. The fact is that police verification occurs in name only, the matter taken care of with some palm greasing and the clearance given, in most cases, without the police actually determining the applicant's credentials and identity. The report in yesterday's paper is ample testimony to the nature of verification conducted by the police. And in this respect the evil nexus between the middleman, police and system operators within the department of passport and immigration has to be snapped for good.
Evidently too, the matter of issue of passport within 24 hours has to be revisited. The idea is very good indeed but open to misuse given the loopholes in the existing system. We suggest that no passport be issued without prior verification. Given the extensive use of IT in vogue in the country today the process should not consume much time, more so when we all will eventually possess NID which will help the process.