Simplifying passport issuance

WHILE the manpower export business of the country has been flourishing, the demand for issuance of more and more passports has increased exponentially. The processes of both manpower export and the issuance of passports have also become known for having become progressively corrupt. While extraction of speed money, as fringes benefits to insiders in passport offices for their additional work or increased work load, has become a practice, those in the fringes of the society who were and are on the move for jobs abroad are reportedly overtaxed. They have or have had to spend far more than officially necessary to acquire passports to destinations abroad for earning money to send home. But having a passport in the normal circumstance -- no blame for any offence, pending investigation or trial -- is a citizen's birthright. But access to this right or asserting it still remains difficult for the powerless many, who seek manual jobs abroad as ordinary workers to empower themselves and assist the country in acquiring more foreign exchange.
Against this backdrop, the short agency report about the opening of an one-stop service centre at the regional passport office in the capital for quick endorsement of passports from the 29th of this month, published in this paper last Monday, came as a refreshing news. According to the report, applicants would be able to complete work related to their passport endorsement, like change of profession, name and address, at this centre on payment of a fee of Tk 500 in a day. The procedures for availing of the service have been spelt out in the pertinent government order alongside indications about who would get the priority. Compared to the hassles, including financial losses, endured by a majority of fresh applicants for passports, the arrangement made for prompt endorsement of passports is virtually nothing. The government should ease the process of issuance of new passport to facilitate any fresh applicant for the travel document and to also successfully combat the proliferating corruption which has spread with the involvement of middlemen in and around the passport offices, often used by many insiders as their conduits for extracting illegal, excess money from desperate passport seekers.
An eased process of issuance of passport may require a citizen to submit the police report on him for purpose of passport issuance at a designated passport office. The report should be obtained from the local police station (PS) or the one within the jurisdiction of which he or she has lived continuously for two years or more until the date of submission of the application. It can be stipulated that the relevant passport office would keep the pertinent PS informed about the receipt of the application and issue and deliver the passport just on expiry of a full month following the submission of an application. The PS concerned may be required to inform the designated passport office about any major offence reported against an applicant promptly, may be within two days of receiving the complaint in writing and at least seven days prior to the issue-date of the passport. The government order may also provide that anyone misinforming or lodging a false complaint against any applicant for passport to the police should be arrested for prosecution.
The new arrangement, as suggested, may appear cumbersome to the authorities. But there is no simple management solution to any complex problem. The government may earnestly decide whether the related official agencies would be involved in some difficult drills to ease the particular nagging problem of citizens or should they suffer perennially while seeking to obtain passports. The connection between manpower export and passport issuance also merits serious official attention in evolving the new approach.