The Bangladesh Army-led ongoing machine readable passport project has been given the responsibility of passport printing, storing and quality control after over two thousand passport booklets went missing from Agargoan passport office recently, said sources in the Department of Immigration and Passports.
‘Under the office order, one army officer was entrusted with the whole procedure and his approval will be needed before any passport is issued to an applicant,’ said Brigadier General Md Refayet Ullah, the director of the machine readable passport and visa project.
The DIP, issuing an official order on August 5, said Lieutenant Colonel Md Jamal Mahmud Siddique, the deputy director of the army-led project, was given the charge of the personalisation centre until further notice.
DIP officials said that they were responsible for storing, verifying and issuing passports and army personnel had been deployed only to provide technical assistance to them.
Md Shiraj Uddin, DIP’s director for passports and visas, told New Age that the decision was taken to remove ambiguity among the officials, both of military and DIP, about their responsibilities with regard to the personalisation centre and passport issuance.
The move was made after an investigation held responsible some officials for the missing 2,280 passport booklets from the Agargaon office, said DIP sources.
Henceforth, Lieutenant Colonel Jamal will be also the custodian of the whole security arrangement of passport booklets and laminates storeroom, the official order stated.
Jamal will look after the passport personalising (printing), quality control, extra data page printing and handing over to the postal department during different phases of passport issuance.
After forged passports were found at airport immigration in June and onwards, the DIP launched an investigation led by Lieutenant Colonel Md Abu Nasir Bhuiyan, another deputy director, to identify the people behind the crime and to determine the exact number of passports that went missing from the Agarogaon office.
The committee has so far identified some 10 people including DIP officials and employees of Iris Corp as being involved in stealing passports.
Iris Corp’s joint venture with Data Edge Ltd and Polish Security Printing Works has been working for the introduction of Machine Readable Passports and Machine Readable Visas in Dhaka.
Officials said that passports went missing in different phases when they were being carried from the storeroom on the eight floor to the personalisation room on the first floor of the passport office.
Sources said that the criminals will be handed over to the law enforcers before the Eid-ul-Fitr vacation.
Sources in the DIP, however, said that a vested quarter is trying to protect those who were found guilty.
Various security agencies, including National Security Intelligence, were separately investigating the incident of missing passport booklets.
Officials said that some 26,00,000 MRPs have so far been issued under the project.
The Iris Corp under the contract will supply some 66 lakh copies of passport booklets.
About 35 lakh have already been supplied to the authorities, said officials.
Courtesy of New Age
