Shah Alam Nur :Jobs of more than seven million Bangladeshi migrant workers are at stake due to failure of converting their manual passports into Machine Readable Passport (MRP), source said.The Bangladeshi migrant workers may lose their jobs if they fail to produce MRP on before November 24. According to the Bureau of Manpower Employment and Training (BMET), there are nine million Bangladeshi migrant workers in different countries of the world, of which about 3.6 million live in the KSA, 2.3 million in UAE and over 0.7 million in Malaysia.The Bangladeshi migrant workers across the world will be treated as illegal ones if government fails to issue the MRP in time.Source said that, in the recent time, countries of the world have stopped accepting the handwritten passport as per the international aviation rules. And they have asked Bangladeshi migrant workers to collect the MRP for updating their migrant status, including visa renewal.In 2010 the government took an initiative to provide the MRP to all migrant workers. But only 2.1 million migrants have got the latest mandatory requirement for them.Rashidul Karim has been living in Malaysia for 10 years, and now he needs renewal of visa. But for not getting MRP he could not update his visa.He said that two months ago he had applied to the mission office for MRP but to no avail.He said, after expiry of the date, he will be an illegal immigrant.Abdul Khalaque lives in Saudi Arab. Several times he had wanted help from the government officers, but did not get any response from them.He said, the MRP project is going on very slowly. As a result they are facing many problems.An official of Ministry of Expatriates’ Welfare and Overseas Employment (MoEWOE) said that with the present capacity, the authorities now could complete procedures for 13,000 only per day against demand for minimum 22,000 applications to meet the deadline.He said the Bangladesh mission in Riyadh at present has been providing average 800 MRP ones while it needs to process a minimum of 8,000 to 10,000 to meet the deadline.If the present condition continues, the mission in KSA could issue about 150,000 MRP. But the KSA is the largest destination for Bangladeshi migrants with more than 3.6 million there.NM Zeaul Alam, Director General of Department of Immigration and Passports said, their office needs adequate manpower and machinery since the MRP project was going slow.He said, they are very serious about providing MRPs to all of the migrant workers within 2015 as the government has turned to outsourcing.
