Electronic passports set for launch this month

Machine readable passports (MRPs) are set for launch on March 31 in a move to speed border clearance and improve security for travellers.
“We will issue the three categories of MRPs – red for diplomats, navy blue for government officials and green for the general people starting the last day of March from the Dhaka office of the passport department. After that, the department will issue MRPs from its 10 regional offices within the year,” said Brigadier General Refayetullah, project director. “Everybody has to come to the passport offices to give finger prints and photos but people can apply online,” he added. The decision to issue MRPs comes after a decision by the International Civil Aviation Organisation (ICAO) that all countries must replace manually-processed passports with MRPs by April 2010.
He said authorities have not yet determined the price for the passport, but said that a committee recommended charging Tk 6,000 for an emergency passport and Tk 4,000 for a normal passport.
Abdus Sobhan Sikder, secretary of the Home Ministry yesterday said that the authority would issue MRP first to diplomats, officials and other professionals. “MRPs will be issued on priority basis as all the mechanism have not yet been completed in all the offices of the passport department,” he said.
“The authority will also issue handwritten passports on an emergency basis for a one-year period until March 31, 2011 if they cannot issue MRPs immediately,” he said.
The passport authority will gradually set up the necessary equipment in all 67 Bangladesh missions abroad. “In the first phase, we will set up machines to five Bangladesh missions – in the US, UK, UAE, Saudi Arabia and Malaysia because a sizeable number of  Bangladeshi expatriates live in those countries,” he said. Urgent MRPs will be issued in a week and normal MRPs within one month, sources said.
The project will complete in June, 2014 involving an estimated cost of Tk 283 crore (20 million).
Many countries including the US and UK will start refusing to accept non-MRP passports in the near future. Many countries including the US, the UK, Malaysia, Canada, Australia, Singapore, the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain have already introduced the MRP.

Courtesy of The Independent