UNB, Dhaka :The slow pace in issuing machine-readable passports (MRPs) has built tension among 36 lakh Bangladeshi migrants in 13 countries as they will be considered illegal workers if the government fails to provide them with MRPs by November 24.The old passport holders will not be allowed to travel to any country after the deadline set by International Civil Aviation Organisation (ICAO) making MRPs mandatory for all nationalities across the world.Sources at the Expatriates’ Welfare and Overseas Employment Ministry here said there are 91 lakh Bangladeshi migrants in 160 countries. Most of the old (non-MRP) passport holders (nearly 57.5 lakh) have been living in 13 countries. Among them, 20.7 lakh people were provided with MRPs, but nearly 36 lakh are yet to get the ones.The 13 countries are Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Malaysia, Oman, Qatar, Singapore, Italy, Korea, Mauritius, Japan, Egypt, Brunei and Jordan.”It’s a very important issue to us. I have held meetings with several ministers and high officials aiming to accelerate the issuance of MRPs to the Bangladeshi migrants,” Expatriates’ Welfare and Overseas Employment Minister Khandkar Mosharraf Hossain told UNB.Asked whether it would be possible to provide all the expatriates with MRPs within the deadline, the minister said, “We hope we’ll be able to deliver MRPs to 90-95 percent expatriates by the given time.”The government employed Malaysian outsourcing company ‘IRIS’ to complete the procedure for providing MRPs to the Bangladeshis living in Saudi Arabia and the UAE . But the company has failed to do the work properly due to some infrastructural problems, the minister said.IRIS is supposed to provide the authorities concerned the expatriates’ birth registration, photo and other data through online, the ministry sources said.But the work is getting delayed as IRIS failed to accomplish the birth registration work speedily due to some technical problems like slow server, the sources added.
