THE Foreign Ministry has informed the Parliamentary Standing Committee on Ministry of Foreign Affairs that passports are not usually issued allegedly without bribes. The ministry concerned claimed it at a JS body meeting in the parliament building on Wednesday. Foreign Minister AK Abdul Momen said that his ministry received allegations form almost all the foreign missions that the authorities concerned were making delay in reissuing passports and the service seekers were not getting passports without bribes. Indian High Commission informed the ministry that the passport office issued three machine-readable passports against a person in a year. TIB’s National Household Survey had found that passport sector was the most corrupt one while 77.7 per cent of households fell victim to corruption when securing services from passport offices.
Even with the assistance of a section of passport officials, a number of Rohingya refugees have obtained passports. This syndicate collects the National ID card, citizenship, birth registration and police verification certificates from relevant government offices using their link as well as by bribing officials. We do believe, the allegation of taking bribe is not baseless. But the practice should be stopped and the process of passport renewal to be faster as there was no requirement of police verification. The passport office across the country has become the hotbed of corrupt people to swell their pockets. The situation is not unknown to the law enforcement and other security agencies, but no measure was taken to make the passport office clear off corruption.
Whatever the government says about corruption it is the lifeblood of the government. It has also been proved that the government is surrounded by incompetent people for loyalty in exchange for corruption. The government is incapable of having right ideas for doing the right thing. So corruption may be revealed but there would be no government’s measure to stop it. So it is for the government to show us that it can survive without corruption.
