The government has taken a big move to issue about 30 million higher technology-based e-passports for the citizens of the country aiming to make Bangladeshi passports more safe and secured.
The Department of Immigration and Passports under the Ministry of Home Affairs will implement a project titled, ‘Bangladesh e-Passport and formulation of automated border control management’ to issue e-passports. The project costs about Tk 46.36 billion (Tk 4,636 crore) to be entirely borne from the state exchequer.
“The Planning Commission has already received a draft project proposal to this end and after necessary formalities, the project is likely to be placed before the ECNEC meeting soon,” said a senior Planning Commission official.
He said the project is included as a new unapproved project without allocation in the revised Annual Development Programme of the outgoing fiscal (FY18) and it is scheduled to be implemented during July 2018 to June 2028, reports BSS.
The project area covers the main office of the Department of Immigration and Passports in Dhaka, Diplomatic Passport Office, data centre, passport assembly line, personalisation centre and training centre in Dhaka.
The project will also be implemented at all the 72 regional passport offices in 64 districts, some 80 Bangladesh missions abroad, disaster recovery centre in Jashore, three international airports in the country, automated border control system at two land ports and 22 other border control system, 72 SB or DSB offices and the reference point at Munich in Germany.
According to the Home Ministry, the ECNEC approved the ‘Introduction of machine readable passport and machine readable visa in Bangladesh’ project on March 19, 2009. The government used to issue hand-made passports before April 1, 2010 for which the Bangladeshi citizens had to face various hassles in travelling to other countries side by side there were also scopes for forgery.
On April 1, 2010, the government introduced the machine readable passports (MRPs) and visas in line with the guideline of the International Civil Aviation Organisation (ICAO), but the current MRPs do not have the scope for preserving the print of 10 fingers of a passport holder in the database.
Under the circumstances, there is a need to introduce the modern technology-based e-passports in the country to further enhance the security of the Bangladeshi passports apart from increasing the acceptability of Bangladeshi passports.
E-passports are already in operation in about 119 countries across the world since those are more safe and secured than the MRPs. Earlier, on April 24, 2016, during the inauguration of passport service week, Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina gave the directives for initiating the process for lunching e-passports in the country.
