The Malaysian company assigned to prepare machine-readable passport (MRP) yesterday renewed its threat to pull out of the MRP project if the authorities do not extend its contract by October 31.
The announcement came only a day after the company IRIS Corporation Berhad consented to continue with the job on condition that their contract will be renewed by the deadline in accordance with a proposal to adjust the current dollar rate.
The passport officials had agreed to the proposal, but the home ministry did not approve it and sent it back to the Department of Immigration and Passport (DIP) on Tuesday evening.
“We came to know that the proposal has been sent back. We can now say that we will continue issuing the MRPs only if the proposal is approved unchanged,” Noor A Alam Chowdhury of Dataedge Ltd, the local partner of the Malaysian firm.
“We didn't demand any extra money from the government…. We wanted our payments are made in current rate of US dollar as almost all pieces of the equipment are imported from several countries.”
Noor questioned, “Can you buy anything from abroad with the dollar rate of 2010 when a US dollar was equivalent to Tk 69?”
The Malaysian firm pulled out its entire staff on Monday as the government failed to renew the contract.
Meanwhile, Director General of DIP Abdul Mabud and Project Director of MRP project Brig Gen Refayet Ullah met Home Secretary CQK Mustak Ahmed at the home ministry yesterday afternoon to convince him to approve the proposal.
“We explained everything to him [secretary],” mentioned the DG, adding that the proposal was sent back for fine-tuning in line with the Public Procurement Regulation (PPR).
Asked whether the proposal was prepared without following the PPR, he said, “We followed the PPR but the secretary wanted a recheck of it.”
The DG hoped that the problem would be resolved soon.
The government appointed IRIS in 2010 with Tk 526 crore for two and a half years to introduce MRP in the country. The deal expired on March 31 this year.
As per the contract, the government was supposed to create trained manpower to take over the project from the firm.
But the authorities are yet to start any recruitment for the project.
About 12,000 MRP are issued every day and the demand for the modern passport is increasing.
Any halt in the MRP project will have adverse impact on the overseas travellers, especially the businesspeople and expatriate workers.