MRP project outlives tenure for drawbacks

Cost more than doubles for deadline failures, may stand in way of e-passport introduction.

Government passport authority feels it difficult to wrap up the long-drawn-out machine-readable passport (MRP) project for its insufficient delivery capacity, though the MRPs will be redundant pieces of travel document shortly.

Another scheme, in the meantime, lies in wait for introducing electronic passport or e-passport, officials said.

The MRP project had gone through two-phase time extension and was scheduled to expire in June 2017.

In the wake of such laggard run, the Department of Immigration and Passports (DIP) recently requested the government to extend the project further by a year.

Concomitant with deadline failures the project cost also escalated in three phases to Tk 7.10 billion. An increase in the number of service centres in head offices and across the country also contributed to the cost rises.

Initial project cost was Tk 3.10 billion that rose up to Tk 4.80 billion in the second phase.

The government plans to launch next year e-passport to replace the MRP. Until then, the project is destined to be continued under a latest decision on its extension, the sources said.

The MRP project, being implemented by IRIS Corporation Bhd Malaysia, was scheduled for handover to the DIP by 2014.

Talking to the FE, DIP Director-General Masud Rezwan said the department is in a process of launching e-passport and the current project could be continued until the start of e-passport.

“We want assist of the venture for software program and technical administration of the MRP,” he said.

The DIP is now preparing Development Project Proposal (DPP) for the launch of e-passport, he added.

“We held a assembly last week on e-passport at the home ministry with its secretary in the chair.”

He similarly said the DIP is imparting coaching to its officers to decorate their capabilities to match in the digital passport regime.

“It has additionally manpower scarcity as some 1,020 officers are working across the country out of accredited posts for 1184,” he added.

Each of the officials is able to supply offerings to most forty service- seekers day by day however they are serving one hundred twenty five humans on average, he said, referring to their constraints.

Despite all this, the DIP has brought several reforms in passport-and visa- issuance processes.

Since April last, passport-seekers of sixty five overseas international locations have received passport without delay from the ministry of domestic affairs inside a week, he said.

Passports are printed centrally from the department’s head office at Agargaon.

“Earlier, the DIP had to ship the passport by way of foreign ministry in a prolonged process. Expatriate Bangladeshis had to wait two-three months for a passport,” he said.

The DIP floated tenders and FedEx won the bid, he said.

It has issued some 18.0 million MRPs so a long way through 67 passport workplaces across the country, he added.

The DIP underneath the home ministry had launched the mission for issuing about 18.4 million MRPs by means of 2014.

Bangladesh had a compulsion to introduce MRP via April 2010 to comply with the International Civil Aviation Organisation requirements. Failure to come to be an ICAO member would possibly have an effect on Bangladeshi citizens’ get entry to to the international labour market and visas.

The government would have to spend a massive sum once more for issuing electronic passports after the MRPs become invalid throughout the globe. All developed international locations in the world have already added electronic passports.

The e-passport may additionally be issued for 10 years and might be a biometric passport containing distinct aspects of the holder.

The authorities will flow tender and start a assignment to make e-passport below build-own-operate-transfer (BOOT) basis.