NEWS reports in a national daily on Wednesday said that the Department of Immigration and Passport (DIP) has issued nearly 2,000 passports on fake no-objection certificates handed out by government officials at different Ministries. An internal investigation committee found that brokers, travel agents and human traffickers in the capital’s Agargaon area and Faridpur town to be mainly responsible for the fraud who worked with government officials to arrange the no-objection certificates and get the diplomatic passport issued.
The disclosure has stunned the conscious citizens as to how the racketeers made it possible copying the sign and seal of the concerned government officials to make diplomatic passport for ordinary citizens. In fact, human racketeers were sending people particularly job-seekers abroad under the cover of the diplomatic passports for over one year and the Turkish immigration officials were the first to break the secret in last April as they detained three persons at Ankara airport travelling with government passports but they appeared not to that standard.
Later investigations showed dishonest officials at different Ministries facilitated the making of those false passports bypassing standard official procedure in exchange of huge sums of bribes. They collected and produced fake no-objection certificates and the immigration officials at Agargaon passport office accepted those certificates without police verification and such other probes. The passport forgery has been detected at a time when Bangladesh is coming under intense global pressure to reign in growing terrorism with allegations that Islamist militants are spreading their nest in the country.
As we all know easy availability of diplomatic passports for people like carpenters, cleaners, office assistants, computer operators and shop-keepers is not only a severe crime breaking the government security wall, it is also a threat to countries where they may travel with such passports. It is not unlikely that militant outfits could also take hold of such passports and may have even done it, to travel to a third country to take part in terrorist attack to bring big trouble for the government. It will also destroy the country’s image abroad.
It should be no surprise that the passport offices have issued high valued diplomatic passports without demanding the physical presence of the persons on whose names these passports were issued. They joined others benefiting from corruption. It shows a clear nexus between the passport officials and unholy syndicates to provide ordinary people with diplomatic passport in exchange of huge cost.
Corruption is power and nothing is to be attained by punishing a few when corruption is systemic.
