MEDIA reports on Friday said more than seven million Bangladeshi migrant workers are at stake in their country of residence due to the failure of converting their manual passports into Machine Readable Passports (MRP) by November 2015 at the latest. According to the Bureau of Manpower Employment and Training (BMET), there are nine million Bangladeshi migrant workers in different countries, of which about 3.6 million live in Saudi Arabia, 2.3 million in United Arab Emirates and over 0.7 million in Malaysia.
The migrant workers yet to get MRPs are becoming panicked as the stipulated time is approaching closer. They fear they would be treated illegal migrants without valid passport on expiry of the date if the government fails to provide them the electronic passport in time. According to media disclosure almost all countries of the world have already stopped accepting hand written passports as per new International Aviation Rules and thus they asked Bangladeshi migrant workers to collect MRPs for updating their resident status, including visa renewal immediately. In 2010, the government took the initiative to provide the MRPs to all migrant workers but only 2.1 million were so far handed over it raising question why the concerned authorities were failing.
An official of the Ministry of Expatriates’ Welfare and Overseas Employment (MoEWOE) has been quoted in the report as saying that the present manpower capacity handling the MRP project is not enough to complete the task. They can deliver 13,000 MRPs per day while a minimum of 22,000 applications need to be handled per day to meet the deadline. He said Bangladesh mission in Riyadh is now providing 800 MRPs on an average per day. But it requires settling a minimum of 8,000 to 10,000 applications daily if it were to meet the deadline. A total of 3.6 million workers are there and estimates suggest in the given space only 150,000 MRP can be issued within the deadline.
The way the government is handling the MRP project shows the utter irresponsibility of the government and leaderless situation at the relevant Ministry. It is not time for the Director General of Department of Immigration and Passports to complain about the shortage of manpower and equipment. Why they have lost the valuable time over last five years is the biggest question. Meanwhile departmental people enjoyed expensive tours abroad in the name of capacity building and know about technical matters. It appears they lost public money but performed nothing substantial to take the work of the project at the end.
In our view the government must prove its capacity that it can do the job before so many migrant workers are facing the deadline as they are now living in despair. Lack of manpower and such other things can’t be an excuse. We can’t prove incapable to the world that we are unable to give even passport to our nationals.
The migrant workers yet to get MRPs are becoming panicked as the stipulated time is approaching closer. They fear they would be treated illegal migrants without valid passport on expiry of the date if the government fails to provide them the electronic passport in time. According to media disclosure almost all countries of the world have already stopped accepting hand written passports as per new International Aviation Rules and thus they asked Bangladeshi migrant workers to collect MRPs for updating their resident status, including visa renewal immediately. In 2010, the government took the initiative to provide the MRPs to all migrant workers but only 2.1 million were so far handed over it raising question why the concerned authorities were failing.
An official of the Ministry of Expatriates’ Welfare and Overseas Employment (MoEWOE) has been quoted in the report as saying that the present manpower capacity handling the MRP project is not enough to complete the task. They can deliver 13,000 MRPs per day while a minimum of 22,000 applications need to be handled per day to meet the deadline. He said Bangladesh mission in Riyadh is now providing 800 MRPs on an average per day. But it requires settling a minimum of 8,000 to 10,000 applications daily if it were to meet the deadline. A total of 3.6 million workers are there and estimates suggest in the given space only 150,000 MRP can be issued within the deadline.
The way the government is handling the MRP project shows the utter irresponsibility of the government and leaderless situation at the relevant Ministry. It is not time for the Director General of Department of Immigration and Passports to complain about the shortage of manpower and equipment. Why they have lost the valuable time over last five years is the biggest question. Meanwhile departmental people enjoyed expensive tours abroad in the name of capacity building and know about technical matters. It appears they lost public money but performed nothing substantial to take the work of the project at the end.
In our view the government must prove its capacity that it can do the job before so many migrant workers are facing the deadline as they are now living in despair. Lack of manpower and such other things can’t be an excuse. We can’t prove incapable to the world that we are unable to give even passport to our nationals.
