Bangladesh News

The government will start issuing machine-readable passport (MRP) by July next year and is going to float a tender for a project in this regard shortly.

A total of 1.1 crore MRPs and 2.5 lakh machine-readable visas (MRV) will be issued in five years under the project involving Tk 220-250 crore, a home ministry official said quoting a meeting held at the ministry yesterday.

At present, about 1.20 crore citizens of the country are passport holders, he added.

Home Adviser Maj Gen (retd) MA Matin, who chaired the meeting, directed a technical committee headed by Abdur Rab Hawlader, director general (DG) of Department of Immigration and Passport, to draft a comprehensive tender document for the project immediately.

Even if the government succeeds in the project, it is still going to miss a deadline in this regard set by the International Civil Aviation Organisation (ICAO), as it has asked Bangladesh to complete issuing MRPs to its citizens by April 2010, sources said.

Comprising 187 member nations, ICAO is a specialised agency of the United Nations that codifies the principles and techniques of international air navigation.

So far, 115 countries including India and Pakistan have issued MRPs to their citizens.

A MRP is a passport where the data on the identity page is encoded in optical character recognition format. Most travel passports in the world are MRPs.

There will be offices in all districts of the country to deliver the passports which will have a validity of 10 years, the meeting decided.

The caretaker government took the initiative to introduce MRP as the BNP-led coalition government failed to do it.

The coalition government designed a project of issuing MRP, MRV and National Identity cards (NID) involving Tk 1,500 crore. However, the initiative drew a lot of flak for alleged irregularities in the process.

The caretaker government has planned a separate project for MRP and MRV, excluding the NID, the home ministry official said quoting the meeting decision.

The NID project costs some Tk 450 crore, the official added.

Participants at the meeting spoke out in favour of employing the manpower and some 9,000 laptops, now engaged in voter listing across the country, in the MRP-MRV project after the voter enrolment is complete.

Briefing the reporters after the meeting, Additional Home Secretary Shaikh Abdur Rashid said that none will be given passport without national identity card after issuance of MRP begins.

Meanwhile, the DG (passport) said that the government will not issue any special passport (gratis passport) after December, 2008.