MRP programme
A few days ago, there was a news report published in almost every major daily of the country regarding the machine readable passport programme (MRP) taken up by the Bangladesh government. With vision of the modern days it is a must for countries like Bangladesh which are LDCs to have MRP as it was learnt that from April 2010 most of the developed countries will not allow the present manual passport which is issued by the government for visa/travel and immigration clearance purpose. From the past experience of our different Bangladeshi governments, we have seen that whatever they do, they do it at the pace of a snail and they fail to meet the target on 95% of the time and many excuses are given by the concerned authorities and departments. Compared to the total population of the country, the users of Bangladesh international passports are probably 8-10% at the most (It's a guess as we do not have any data available of the passport holders of Bangladesh). By number this may sound small but it is very important that the present government prioritise this issue and keep our different foreign offices up to date so that Bangladeshi wage earners who are living aboard and those who are planning to go before or during this transitional time do not face any difficulty with the foreign immigration departments. The project is also very crucial for our businessmen who are frequent flyers for meeting different buyers for export of readymade garments and other items.
According to the dailies the project will cost around around Tk 350 crore for introducing machine readable passports (MRPs) which is on the way for clearance from the Planning Commission (PC) very soon. Now "This very soon" has to be truly very soon as our business community and wage earners need them on top priority basis, so that they do not face any problem while flying. The MRP will also prevent having multiple passports for one person, stop fake passports and will certainly help our immigration and secret services.
We are a country which is heavily dependent on agriculture imports and textile export and export of manpower which are the main arteries for the country' cash inflow system and by giving priority to the MRP it will only help this poor country to keep pace with the international market when it comes to selling our products.
I hope the AL government will give more than 100% for implementing the new passport system much earlier than the international cut off date; otherwise we for sure will fall a lot of steps behind in the national development process.
The International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO) has issued warnings to all countries including Bangladesh to replace their manually processed passports with MRPs by April, 2010. Manually processed passports will become obsolete after 2010 and such passports would no more be acceptable to immigration authorities across the world.
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