Cost of foot-dragging on MRP
Friday, 22 January 2010
The cabinet committee on government purchase late last week gave final approval to awarding the machine-readable passport (MRP) and machine- readable visa (MRV) project to a Malaysian firm. The approval has come almost at the last moment as only two and a half months' time is left to meet the international deadline for the introduction of MRP and MRV. The delay in the process of tender document evaluation and selection of a firm for the job has been, reportedly, responsible for the belated decision-making.
The MRP is a travel document where the data on the identity page is encoded in optical character recognition format. The information about a holder of passports such as name, passport number, nationality, date of birth, sex, passport expiration date and personal identity number are provided in the machine-readable zone of the MRPs which are more reliable and can be processed faster by the immigration officials than the ordinary passports. The International Civil Aviation Organisation (ICAO) has set April 01, 2010 as the deadline for the introduction of MRPs. The existing manually read passports will not be valid for traveling and renewal after that deadline. Such passports can be issued after the ICAO deadline only in case of emergency.
The deadline is unlikely to be met by Bangladesh because of its foot-dragging for long on the MRP project, which was first taken up for implementation by the Awami League government during its 1996-2001 tenure. The BNP-led alliance government scrapped the project but it could not pick up another throughout its five-year term because of the conflict among various interested quarters who included politicians and businessmen. The incumbent government only a couple of months after taking over took measures for expeditious implementation of the project and the Executive Committee of the National Economic Council (ECNEC) approved a Tk. 2.83 billion project in March last for the production of 17.5 million ordinary and 10,000 urgent MRPs. But bidding, evaluation and awarding of contract have taken more than 10 months, apparently because of the involvement of influence peddlers.
But over a period of just 10 months, according to newspaper reports, the cost of the three-year project has increased to 5.26 billion while the number of MRPs to be produced under it has gone down to 6.6 million. Moreover, the Malaysian firm, which is set to receive the MRP contract, is said to have been blacklisted by the Turkish government for its failure to deliver MRPs to Turkey within the contracted schedule. So, the government, for the sake of transparency and accountability, does need to explain the issues, including costs and choice of the firm, involved in the MRP project.
Undoubtedly, foot-dragging, a highly contagious disease that has infected successive governments since independence of the country and contributed to the delay in making decisions on important national issue, on the MRP project for nearly one and a half decades has resulted in cost pushup. This also may make Bangladesh nationals vulnerable to possible harassment at foreign airports for carrying hand-written passports after the expiry of the ICAO deadline. Since it would take three years to change even less than a half of existing hand-written passports into machine-readable ones, the government would have to take appropriate steps so that the Bangladesh travelers are not subjected to harassment at foreign airports.
There is no denying that surveillance at international airports across the world, particularly those in the developed countries, has been beefed up following attacks by international terrorist outfits. Any incoming passenger failing to produce the internationally accepted standard travel documents runs the risks of being harassed by the immigration officials. Under the circumstances, the carriers of Bangladesh hand-written passports might have to encounter unpalatable experiences while traveling outside the country for faults not of their own.
The MRP is a travel document where the data on the identity page is encoded in optical character recognition format. The information about a holder of passports such as name, passport number, nationality, date of birth, sex, passport expiration date and personal identity number are provided in the machine-readable zone of the MRPs which are more reliable and can be processed faster by the immigration officials than the ordinary passports. The International Civil Aviation Organisation (ICAO) has set April 01, 2010 as the deadline for the introduction of MRPs. The existing manually read passports will not be valid for traveling and renewal after that deadline. Such passports can be issued after the ICAO deadline only in case of emergency.
The deadline is unlikely to be met by Bangladesh because of its foot-dragging for long on the MRP project, which was first taken up for implementation by the Awami League government during its 1996-2001 tenure. The BNP-led alliance government scrapped the project but it could not pick up another throughout its five-year term because of the conflict among various interested quarters who included politicians and businessmen. The incumbent government only a couple of months after taking over took measures for expeditious implementation of the project and the Executive Committee of the National Economic Council (ECNEC) approved a Tk. 2.83 billion project in March last for the production of 17.5 million ordinary and 10,000 urgent MRPs. But bidding, evaluation and awarding of contract have taken more than 10 months, apparently because of the involvement of influence peddlers.
But over a period of just 10 months, according to newspaper reports, the cost of the three-year project has increased to 5.26 billion while the number of MRPs to be produced under it has gone down to 6.6 million. Moreover, the Malaysian firm, which is set to receive the MRP contract, is said to have been blacklisted by the Turkish government for its failure to deliver MRPs to Turkey within the contracted schedule. So, the government, for the sake of transparency and accountability, does need to explain the issues, including costs and choice of the firm, involved in the MRP project.
Undoubtedly, foot-dragging, a highly contagious disease that has infected successive governments since independence of the country and contributed to the delay in making decisions on important national issue, on the MRP project for nearly one and a half decades has resulted in cost pushup. This also may make Bangladesh nationals vulnerable to possible harassment at foreign airports for carrying hand-written passports after the expiry of the ICAO deadline. Since it would take three years to change even less than a half of existing hand-written passports into machine-readable ones, the government would have to take appropriate steps so that the Bangladesh travelers are not subjected to harassment at foreign airports.
There is no denying that surveillance at international airports across the world, particularly those in the developed countries, has been beefed up following attacks by international terrorist outfits. Any incoming passenger failing to produce the internationally accepted standard travel documents runs the risks of being harassed by the immigration officials. Under the circumstances, the carriers of Bangladesh hand-written passports might have to encounter unpalatable experiences while traveling outside the country for faults not of their own.