Simplification of issuance of passport
Saturday, 14 July 2007
Khan Ferdousour Rahman
A passport is a travel document issued by a national government that usually identifies the bearer as a national of the issuing state and requests that the bearer be permitted to enter and pass through other countries. Passports are connected with the right of legal protection abroad and the right to enter one's country of nationality. Passports usually contain the holder's photograph, signature, date of birth, nationality, and sometimes other means of individual identification. With the existence of age-old manuscript passport, recently there are significant developments in passport technology, i.e. machine readable passport (MRP) and biometrics passport.
A MRP is a passport where the data on the identity page is encoded in optical character recognition format. The advantages of MRPs are faster processing of arriving passengers by immigration officials; and more secure, compared to the manually read passports that preceded them, since the data read by the machine would always be the same as the data in the database. This enables the immigration officials to process such passports quickly, without having to input the information manually into a computer. Many countries began to issue MRPs in the 1980s and presently most travel passports world-wide are MRPs. A MRP can generally be identified by the presence of two typeface lines printed at the bottom of the biographical page, which can be read by machine, similar to a bar code. When scanned through a passport reader, the lines electronically provide information identical to that contained on the biographical page of the passport.
Biometric passports are having chips that carry supplemental information about the bearer, in a digitised form. A biometric passport contains a biometric identifier - a measurement of a physical characteristic of an individual that, when captured in a database, can be used to verify identity or check against other entries in the database. The best known biometric is the fingerprint, but others include facial and iris scans. These passports were first introduced in 1998 in Malaysia and more recently in other developed countries. These new passports were primarily introduced to prevent identity fraud in order to further confirm that the person presenting the passport is the legitimate holder. Although many countries now have biometric passports, but very few have introduced the equipment to read them at ports of entry, and in the absence of an international standard it is not currently possible for one country to read the biometric information of another.
Department of Immigration and Passports of Bangladesh is an organisation under Ministry of Home Affairs and headed by a Director General (DG), who looks after both passport and immigration matters. Under the supervision of DG, the passport matters are directly dealt by the Director. Total 15 regional passport offices in the country along with 57 overseas missions issue and renew about 100,000 passports in a month. Under the existing system, the department issues three categories of passports, i.e. ordinary international passport for all citizens (issued by DG Immigration and Passport), special passport (restricted for travelling to India only), and diplomatic passport entitled to diplomatic immunity in foreign countries (issued by the foreign secretary to diplomats). Ordinary international passports are again subdivided under gratis passport (given to those who represent the nation) and official passport (given to government officials travelling abroad for official purposes). Presently the international passport issued to the citizens is valid for five years, which requires to be extended for further five years on expire. A new passport book also needs to be collected after expiry of all the pages of old book. MRP has not been introduced and existing passports issued are manuscript types where all the particulars in the passport are entered manually, i.e. hand-written.
Passport delivery service is one of the essential services in any country. And like all other countries, demand for passports has been on increase over the years in Bangladesh. But the passport service delivery system is yet to be improved keeping the pace with increased demand. Rather, there are serious allegations of corruption and harassment in the process of delivery of this service to the general people. Natural expectation of the people is to get easy and smooth delivery of passport whenever it is asked for. But due to numerous irregularities and corruption, people of Bangladesh at present face unwarranted delay and harassment in delivery. The existing process compels the poor people to opt for easier options for taking delivery of passport by giving bribes at different stages of processing a passport. There are reports that money received through bribe is distributed among the staff and officials at different rates. Brokers have become an integral part of passport delivery service, who maintain a close tie with the employees of passport offices and police for quick delivery of passport. They also make payment of required fees to the banks on behalf of the applicants. Some of the present problems of passport delivery system in brief are the complex process of delivery system, waiting in long queues for dropping the application and receiving passport, harassment by brokers, and delay in passport delivery, police verification and forgeries of attestation.
Even after paying the required fees for getting passport, people of Bangladesh are not getting minimum expected services from present passport delivery system. The foreign currency reserve of the country increases by the remittances send by the wage earners working abroad, which has rose close to US$ 6.0 billion in the just concluded fiscal year with around 25 per cent annual growth. But unfortunately they are the main sufferer both in the country in the passport offices and at abroad in various embassies and high commissions. Passport offices process a passport after receiving police verification report, which is mandatory for each applicant for a new passport. It has made the applicants more dependants on Special Branch (SB) of police. During the process of verification, the SB personnel ask for various documents to prove the identity of the applicant. If the applicants are unable to satisfy the police, they have to face harassment and unnecessary delay.
The present interim government of Bangladesh has decided to simplify the process of issuance and renewal of passports making existing rules and procedures easier following the allegations that many people often face immense difficulties for getting passports due to an unholy nexus of middlemen and a section of dishonest officials concerned. The council of advisors in a recent weekly cabinet meeting also discussed possibilities of various options for extending the validity period of passports up to ten years from the existing five years and entrusting a recognised bank or a private organisation or an agency with the responsibility of issuance, addition and renewal of passports. The cabinet asked the Ministry of Home Affairs to submit a comprehensive proposal on the simplification of existing rules and formalities regarding issuance and renewal of passports before the council of advisors. It also advised the ministry to review the passport forms, attestation, fee and other related matters, and gave a directive to ensure delivery of urgent passport in due time.
In the mean time, in another recent move to ease the procedure for issuing passports, the government has already decided to decentralise and outsource the management of passport offices to financial institutes, preferably private banks. Very recently the home ministry has okayed a proposal to empower deputy commissioners of 17 districts with the authority to issue and renew passports. The move was meant to end pervasive harassment of citizens in the hands of the officials and the so-called middlemen in getting passports while forgery is also rampant. Accordingly a pilot project on issuing passports might begin late July 2007 in Savar through the Trust Bank before a final decision comes into effect. A final proposal to the effect will be placed at the Cabinet Division soon for approval. Deputy commissioners' offices of 17 districts - including Gazipur, Narayanganj, Munshiganj, Kushtia, Feni, Chandpur, Cox's Bazar, Patuakhali, Tangail and Brahmanbaria - would be delegated the authority of issuing passports, besides 15 regional passport offices and 57 Bangladesh missions abroad. The decision came in an inter-ministerial meeting at the Ministry of Home Affairs chaired by its secretary and it finalised the 'Passport Licencing Rules, 2007'. Among others, officials from the law ministry and the Bangladesh Bank also attended the meeting.
A seven-member ministerial committee has also been formed led by a joint secretary of home ministry, assigning it to determine the modus operandi of the financial institutes in processing the passports and to scrutinise the technical aspects of the rules, which gets a week to submit its report. According to the rules, the designated deputy commissioners will eventually authorise one magistrate in each district to renew and issue the passports. It has also decided to assign financial institutions such as banks in the designated districts to receive fees for passports. As per the new rule, the applicant needs to use one form for renewal and two forms for a new passport from now. The services charges for both purposes have been fixed at Tk 200 per person per service. The 'most urgent' passports will be issued within 72 hours, even if the police verification is delayed. The issued passport, in such cases, will be cancelled if the police report makes negative comment about the passport holder in question. The 'urgent' passports will be issued within 21 days and 'ordinary' ones in 30 days. Adults will be issued a 64-page passport for 10 years while minors will get 48-page ones with a five-year validity. Meanwhile, a number of private commercial banks have expressed their interest in passport processing.
As short term measure, the issuance of passports would be made faster, easier, user friendly and in a transparent manner in conformity with the best international standards and practices. If possible it should be provided through outsourcing, but that needs to be controlled through regulatory measures. Steps would be taken to avoid delays, discourteous behaviour and harassment of applicants and call for zero tolerance from the concerned officials. As a long-term measure, MRP should be introduced gradually without any further delay after due consideration. Introduction of MRP will enhance the image of the country and at the same time the credibility of the passport holder as it can eliminate forgery and tempering. Issuing of national ID card will also enhance the passport delivery system easier where all necessary information of a citizen will be preserved on a national database through a registration system which can be used for verification. Existing police verification system needs to be reviewed and if required to be discontinued in order to make it very simple and easier. Selection of bank also needs to be carefully made so that it does not favour any particular section of people.
To make the existing procedures and processes of passport delivery enormously simplified and services speeded up, the concerned authority will have to be made transparent and accountable. E-governance needs to be introduced and online application provision to be practised.
...........................................
The writer is a freelancer and can be reached at e-mail: [email protected]
A passport is a travel document issued by a national government that usually identifies the bearer as a national of the issuing state and requests that the bearer be permitted to enter and pass through other countries. Passports are connected with the right of legal protection abroad and the right to enter one's country of nationality. Passports usually contain the holder's photograph, signature, date of birth, nationality, and sometimes other means of individual identification. With the existence of age-old manuscript passport, recently there are significant developments in passport technology, i.e. machine readable passport (MRP) and biometrics passport.
A MRP is a passport where the data on the identity page is encoded in optical character recognition format. The advantages of MRPs are faster processing of arriving passengers by immigration officials; and more secure, compared to the manually read passports that preceded them, since the data read by the machine would always be the same as the data in the database. This enables the immigration officials to process such passports quickly, without having to input the information manually into a computer. Many countries began to issue MRPs in the 1980s and presently most travel passports world-wide are MRPs. A MRP can generally be identified by the presence of two typeface lines printed at the bottom of the biographical page, which can be read by machine, similar to a bar code. When scanned through a passport reader, the lines electronically provide information identical to that contained on the biographical page of the passport.
Biometric passports are having chips that carry supplemental information about the bearer, in a digitised form. A biometric passport contains a biometric identifier - a measurement of a physical characteristic of an individual that, when captured in a database, can be used to verify identity or check against other entries in the database. The best known biometric is the fingerprint, but others include facial and iris scans. These passports were first introduced in 1998 in Malaysia and more recently in other developed countries. These new passports were primarily introduced to prevent identity fraud in order to further confirm that the person presenting the passport is the legitimate holder. Although many countries now have biometric passports, but very few have introduced the equipment to read them at ports of entry, and in the absence of an international standard it is not currently possible for one country to read the biometric information of another.
Department of Immigration and Passports of Bangladesh is an organisation under Ministry of Home Affairs and headed by a Director General (DG), who looks after both passport and immigration matters. Under the supervision of DG, the passport matters are directly dealt by the Director. Total 15 regional passport offices in the country along with 57 overseas missions issue and renew about 100,000 passports in a month. Under the existing system, the department issues three categories of passports, i.e. ordinary international passport for all citizens (issued by DG Immigration and Passport), special passport (restricted for travelling to India only), and diplomatic passport entitled to diplomatic immunity in foreign countries (issued by the foreign secretary to diplomats). Ordinary international passports are again subdivided under gratis passport (given to those who represent the nation) and official passport (given to government officials travelling abroad for official purposes). Presently the international passport issued to the citizens is valid for five years, which requires to be extended for further five years on expire. A new passport book also needs to be collected after expiry of all the pages of old book. MRP has not been introduced and existing passports issued are manuscript types where all the particulars in the passport are entered manually, i.e. hand-written.
Passport delivery service is one of the essential services in any country. And like all other countries, demand for passports has been on increase over the years in Bangladesh. But the passport service delivery system is yet to be improved keeping the pace with increased demand. Rather, there are serious allegations of corruption and harassment in the process of delivery of this service to the general people. Natural expectation of the people is to get easy and smooth delivery of passport whenever it is asked for. But due to numerous irregularities and corruption, people of Bangladesh at present face unwarranted delay and harassment in delivery. The existing process compels the poor people to opt for easier options for taking delivery of passport by giving bribes at different stages of processing a passport. There are reports that money received through bribe is distributed among the staff and officials at different rates. Brokers have become an integral part of passport delivery service, who maintain a close tie with the employees of passport offices and police for quick delivery of passport. They also make payment of required fees to the banks on behalf of the applicants. Some of the present problems of passport delivery system in brief are the complex process of delivery system, waiting in long queues for dropping the application and receiving passport, harassment by brokers, and delay in passport delivery, police verification and forgeries of attestation.
Even after paying the required fees for getting passport, people of Bangladesh are not getting minimum expected services from present passport delivery system. The foreign currency reserve of the country increases by the remittances send by the wage earners working abroad, which has rose close to US$ 6.0 billion in the just concluded fiscal year with around 25 per cent annual growth. But unfortunately they are the main sufferer both in the country in the passport offices and at abroad in various embassies and high commissions. Passport offices process a passport after receiving police verification report, which is mandatory for each applicant for a new passport. It has made the applicants more dependants on Special Branch (SB) of police. During the process of verification, the SB personnel ask for various documents to prove the identity of the applicant. If the applicants are unable to satisfy the police, they have to face harassment and unnecessary delay.
The present interim government of Bangladesh has decided to simplify the process of issuance and renewal of passports making existing rules and procedures easier following the allegations that many people often face immense difficulties for getting passports due to an unholy nexus of middlemen and a section of dishonest officials concerned. The council of advisors in a recent weekly cabinet meeting also discussed possibilities of various options for extending the validity period of passports up to ten years from the existing five years and entrusting a recognised bank or a private organisation or an agency with the responsibility of issuance, addition and renewal of passports. The cabinet asked the Ministry of Home Affairs to submit a comprehensive proposal on the simplification of existing rules and formalities regarding issuance and renewal of passports before the council of advisors. It also advised the ministry to review the passport forms, attestation, fee and other related matters, and gave a directive to ensure delivery of urgent passport in due time.
In the mean time, in another recent move to ease the procedure for issuing passports, the government has already decided to decentralise and outsource the management of passport offices to financial institutes, preferably private banks. Very recently the home ministry has okayed a proposal to empower deputy commissioners of 17 districts with the authority to issue and renew passports. The move was meant to end pervasive harassment of citizens in the hands of the officials and the so-called middlemen in getting passports while forgery is also rampant. Accordingly a pilot project on issuing passports might begin late July 2007 in Savar through the Trust Bank before a final decision comes into effect. A final proposal to the effect will be placed at the Cabinet Division soon for approval. Deputy commissioners' offices of 17 districts - including Gazipur, Narayanganj, Munshiganj, Kushtia, Feni, Chandpur, Cox's Bazar, Patuakhali, Tangail and Brahmanbaria - would be delegated the authority of issuing passports, besides 15 regional passport offices and 57 Bangladesh missions abroad. The decision came in an inter-ministerial meeting at the Ministry of Home Affairs chaired by its secretary and it finalised the 'Passport Licencing Rules, 2007'. Among others, officials from the law ministry and the Bangladesh Bank also attended the meeting.
A seven-member ministerial committee has also been formed led by a joint secretary of home ministry, assigning it to determine the modus operandi of the financial institutes in processing the passports and to scrutinise the technical aspects of the rules, which gets a week to submit its report. According to the rules, the designated deputy commissioners will eventually authorise one magistrate in each district to renew and issue the passports. It has also decided to assign financial institutions such as banks in the designated districts to receive fees for passports. As per the new rule, the applicant needs to use one form for renewal and two forms for a new passport from now. The services charges for both purposes have been fixed at Tk 200 per person per service. The 'most urgent' passports will be issued within 72 hours, even if the police verification is delayed. The issued passport, in such cases, will be cancelled if the police report makes negative comment about the passport holder in question. The 'urgent' passports will be issued within 21 days and 'ordinary' ones in 30 days. Adults will be issued a 64-page passport for 10 years while minors will get 48-page ones with a five-year validity. Meanwhile, a number of private commercial banks have expressed their interest in passport processing.
As short term measure, the issuance of passports would be made faster, easier, user friendly and in a transparent manner in conformity with the best international standards and practices. If possible it should be provided through outsourcing, but that needs to be controlled through regulatory measures. Steps would be taken to avoid delays, discourteous behaviour and harassment of applicants and call for zero tolerance from the concerned officials. As a long-term measure, MRP should be introduced gradually without any further delay after due consideration. Introduction of MRP will enhance the image of the country and at the same time the credibility of the passport holder as it can eliminate forgery and tempering. Issuing of national ID card will also enhance the passport delivery system easier where all necessary information of a citizen will be preserved on a national database through a registration system which can be used for verification. Existing police verification system needs to be reviewed and if required to be discontinued in order to make it very simple and easier. Selection of bank also needs to be carefully made so that it does not favour any particular section of people.
To make the existing procedures and processes of passport delivery enormously simplified and services speeded up, the concerned authority will have to be made transparent and accountable. E-governance needs to be introduced and online application provision to be practised.
...........................................
The writer is a freelancer and can be reached at e-mail: [email protected]