Govt urged to finalise Tk 560cr MRP project

With only 18 months left for Bangladesh to meet an international deadline, the Department of Immigration and Passport has recently requested the government to immediately finalise the five-year project for switching over to machine-readable passports (MRP) and visas.
A total of 1.5 crore machine-readable passports are expected to start being issued by the end of next year under the Tk 560 crore project.
The department last week sent the tender schedule of the project to the home ministry for approval.
The proposal says the winner of the bid will have to ensure printing of 20,000 passports every month with their own logistics, and must develop local expertise during the project period.
It also sent a separate proposal requesting the government to approve the project budget without delay.
Although officials hope to start issuing machine readable passports (MRP) and visas (MRV) by the end of 2009, they said it largely depends on the sincerity of the government.
Once the MRPs are introduced the present primitive handwritten passports, for which Bangladeshi travellers quite often face unwarranted hassles at international airports, will be phased out, the officials added.
They also said unlike the previous two attempts the fresh project will not fizzle out halfway.
"It's a do or die situation since we have to comply with the International Civil Aviation Organization's (ICAO) April 1, 2010 deadline for introducing the machine readable passports and visas," Abdur Rob Hawlader, director general of the passport and immigration department, told The Daily Star yesterday.
He said everything should be done on an urgent basis otherwise meeting the deadline will be very difficult.
"Even if we start issuing the passports in September 2009 it will not be easy to convert all handwritten passports into machine readable ones in five years," he observed adding the country has over 1.2 crore handwritten passports which must be converted by November 2015.
The department already received Tk 2 crore to appoint an international consultant and applications for the job were invited.
It hopes to appoint a consultant within a couple of months, who will have at least a year's experience in preparing machine readable passports.
The consultant's responsibilities will include monitoring, evaluation and supervision of the project, and training passport officials and employees.
The consultant will also develop a master plan for introducing the machine readable passports and visas.
Bangladesh desperately requires introduction of MRPs to bring an end to the frequent harassment its citizens face during international travel.
MRPs will also help curb forgery of passports, which are often used for human trafficking.
If Bangladesh fails to comply with the ICAO requirement by April 2010, the country's access to international manpower market as well as its citizens' chances of getting all types of foreign visas will be at risk, immigration officials said.
The last Awami League (AL) government first took the initiative for introducing MRPs in 1998.
BNP-Jamaat-led four-party alliance government later took a fresh initiative, but their
Tk 1,546 crore mega project for MRPs, MRVs and national identity cards was scrapped following controversies over appointment of a consultant and tender document manipulation in 2006.
Some 115 out of 187 member nations of ICAO, including India and Pakistan, already issued machine readable passports to their citizens.
Bangladesh is a member of ICAO, a global forum for civil aviation also a specialized United Nations agency that codifies principles and techniques of international air navigation, and fosters planning and development of international air transport.
Four consultants from the International Organisation for Migration (IOM) are voluntarily assisting Bangladesh's effort to introduce MRPs. They are also expected to monitor the work of the consultant to be appointed.
In a machine readable passport the data on the identity page is encoded in optical character recognition format. Most passports in the world can now be read by machines.
Once the project is implemented, passport seekers will be able to apply online, reducing mistakes in spellings of names and other details, experts said adding that online applicants will still have to go to passport offices for being photographed and finger printed.
There will be offices in all 64 districts of the country for passport delivery, said official sources.