Int'l tender for appointing consultants to launch machine readable passports soon

FE Report brThe department of immigration and passport (DIP) has received a Tk 20 million fund for appointing consultants through an international tender to introduce machine readable passports (MRPs). brThe ministry of finance approved the fund for MRPs as DIP sough the fund March 10 through the Ministry of Home Affairs to help it introduce the MRPs, said DIP Director General (DG) Abdur Rob Howlader. brWe're now waiting for home ministry's approval for floating the international tender for appointing consultants for the introduction of MRPs, the DIP DG said. brIf everything goes well, we'll be able to replace manually processed passports with MRPs by 2009, he added. brAs 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. brThe DIP has already appointed a 'Project Director' to operate the MRP project. brThe DIP official said the MRP would be designed in such a way that it would lessen hassles and speed up the process and delivery of passport.brRecently, the DIP signed an agreement with the International Organisation for Migration (IOM) to assist the DIP for introducing MRP. brCurrently, 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 services.brThe 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 designed to be error-free, the DIP DG added.brHe 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.brMachine 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.brMost of the countries have already introduced MRP or biometric passports to prevent smuggling and cross-country terrorist operations. brIn 2007, the DIP earned Tk 5.76 billion through issuing nearly 1.8 million passports. It already issued 1.2 million passports until June 2008 and earned Tk 3.26 billion.br