Police verification for passport
70,000 cases pending with Special Branch
About 70,000 applications for fresh Machine Readable Passports have been awaiting police verification report for a long time.
Of the pending passports, 899 applicants have been waiting for more than one year, 2,525 for six months, 5,582 for two months, 15,682 for more than 15 days after the expiry of the delivery dates set by the Department of Immigration and Passports till August 14, the department sources said.
A fresh passport is supposed to be issued in 15 days for a fee of Tk 3,000, while in seven days in emergency cases at a fee of Tk 6,000.
The special branch officials said that they were facing shortage of equipment to deliver the verification reports on time.
Additional inspector general of police, Javed Patwari, also the special branch chief, at a recent meeting, however, had said that they were completing about 10,000 verification reports in each working day.
Amid the problems, a high-level meeting recently had decided that the Department of Immigration and Passports henceforth would issue passports within 15 days in express service and 30 days in ordinary service without police verification report if the special branch failed to prepare the respective verification reports before delivery time, said the DIP officials.
Brigadier General Md Refayet Ullah, the project director of introduction of machine readable passport and visa, admitted that delay of verification report was one of the major causes that delayed issuing new passports to the applicants within the stipulated time.
He said they could not issue a number of MRPs because of non-availability of police verification reports within the stipulated time.
‘The new decision on issuing passports without verification on time, however, would not pose any security threat,’ he believed.
Official sources said that
members of the Special Branch of police allegedly continued to collect money from the people who need their ‘verification’ for securing passports and created delay if applicants could not respond to their illegal demand.
A number of victims alleged that SB officials realised money from them for issuance the verification report but if declined they (SB men) unusually delay issuing those, causing delay in passport delivery.
If all documents and information were found correct, then SB men realise money either for ‘baksish’ or ‘transportation costs’, victims told New Age.
On August 7, New Age talked to about 50 applicants queued in front of passport delivery centre at Agargaon from 10am to 1:00pm on a random basis to know whether they were forced to pay money without receipts to the authorities in any steps of securing a new passport.
Of them, some 30 applicants having both permanent and present addresses were compelled to pay up to Tk 1,700 for both addresses while applicants having only one address needed to pay at least Tk 500 for the verification.
Of the applicants, at least 20 who applied under express service, said they had approached to passport office after due delivery date but the officials said their passports were not being produced due to lack of verification report on time.
The victims said when they approached the SB office at Malibagh or local police stations, they sought money to produce the verification report.
‘I had protested saying I would not pay a single penny as all documents were properly produced. But my report was not produced in time,’ said a businessman, Mohammad Ali Hossain Dulal, while he came to Agargaon Passport Office in the capital to receive his passport on August 7, two weeks after the delivery date fixed by the passport authorities.
He submitted his application and documents with Tk 6,000 on July 11 to receive the passport on express service and officials had fixed July 22 for its delivery.
But he did not get his passport on time due to delay in police verification.
Ali said he had finally approached a sub-inspector and paid him Tk 500 for his present address in Dhaka and Tk 500 more for his permanent address in Nariya upazila of Shariathpur.
‘I received my passport today, two weeks after the delivery date,’ he said.
Md Ariful Islam Sadi, a food technologist of Maritime Entrepreneurs, said he had to pay Tk 1,700 for verification at permanent address in Madaripur but he did not get the passport due to delay in issuing verification report.
Sadi said he approached the SB office in Malibagh due to delay of verification report even after illegal payment. But the SB officials sent the report on July 23, a week after the delivery date.
Aminul lslam, who works for a non-government organisation in Savar, said that he had given Tk 500 to Mymensingh police to verify his permanent address and Tk 700 to the police to verify his present address at Savar in Dhaka.
The special superintend (verification) of SB, Nazrul Islam, told New Age they would welcome specific allegations from any victims and action would be taken according to law.
‘But in last one year of my tenure, I have not received a single such allegation,’ claimed Nazrul.
The SB sources said that at a ministerial meeting in 2010 they had requested the home ministry to sanction Tk 200 to conduct each verification, but the request was turned down.
The DIP officials said in the passport processing fee there was no allocation of money for police to conduct verifications as it is a government duty. This led the policemen to realise money from the passport applicants.
-With New Age input
