Tk 5.6b fund for machine readable passport soon

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Mahmuda Shaolin
A proposal for allocating a Tk 5.60 billion fund for introducing machine readable passports (MRPs) is likely to get clearance from the Planning Commission (PC) soon.
Sources said the Ministry of Home has already sent the proposal to the PC, which is expected to give its clearance soon and place it for final approval by the Executive Committee of the National Economic Council (ECNEC).
We're hopeful of getting all these procedures completed by this month," said a high official of the Department of Immigration and Passport (DIP).
As per the decision of the International Civil Aviation Organisation (ICAO), all countries, including Bangladesh, must replace their manually processed passports with MRPs by April 2010. Manually processed passports will become obsolete after 2010 and such passports would no more be acceptable to immigration authorities across the world, ICAO said.
"If the authorities make any delay in approving the fund for the project there is every possibility of failing to meet the ICAO's deadline. As a result, many countries will simply not allow Bangladeshi travellers after 2010," said the DIP official.
When contacted, DIP Director General (DG) Abdur Rob Howlader said DIP has taken an MRP project to comply with the ICAB's decision and if the project is approved the DIP will be able to launch the project through inviting an international tender as soon as possible.
"We've already appointed a 'Project Director' to operate the MRP project," the DIP DG added. A consultant is expected to be appointed soon for implementation of the project.
To comply with the ICAB's deadline, the issue was discussed in an inter-ministerial meeting with Home Adviser MA Matin in the chair about three months back. The meeting reviewed the overall situation of the MRP and decided to go ahead with the MRP project to meet the ICAO's deadline.
"We've got a proposal from the International Organisation for Migration (IOM) for introduction of MRP. The DIP has also given a letter to the IOM requesting it to review our country's rules and regulations and to settle some of the technical issues for the MRP," Mr. Howlader said.
He said the MRP would be designed in such a way that it would lessen hassles and speed up the process and delivery of passport.
At present, an applicant has to wait from a week to over a month to get a passport, depending on the amount of money one pays for the service.
"The MRP will ease the processing time. It'll replace the age-old manual system, which is not error-free, costly and time-consuming. The MRP is guaranteed to be error-free," the DIP DG said.
Mr. Howlader said the MRP would meet all international standards as instructed by the ICAO and as a result no country would be able to harass Bangladeshi travellers including workers or to impound the manually processed passports on any ground.
"Bangladesh nationals carry passports processed manually using primitive technologies, which often cause unwarranted hassles for them at overseas airports," said another DIP official.
According to DIP, machine readable passports bear a zone where some of the information otherwise written in textual form as strings of alphanumeric characters, are printed in a manner suitable for optical character recognition.
Most of the countries have already introduced MRP or biometric passports to prevent smuggling and cross-country terrorist operations.
In 2007, the DIP earned Tk 5.76 billion through issuing nearly 1.8 million passports. It has already issued 1.2 million passports until June 2008 and earned Tk 3.26 billion.