They treat the ‘common’ people like cattle, and they are positively encouraging the business of the agents who would make things easy for a ‘nominal’ feeI found a little place on the counter of a service window and hurriedly filled my form, receiving an elbow midway through signing my name. I had to sign a second time. There were two separate lines -- one for renewals, one for new passports; and, thankfully, the line for renewals was relatively short. But the room, with so many people, sweating profusely and some talking at the top of their voices, was a hellhole, to put it mildly. There was a lot of jostling, and standing on the line was not that easy. Finally, I reached the much-sought window and, after my form was stamped with the gentle thud of a seal, I was promptly “requested” to proceed to another room, and, of course, another line. There was again plenty of jostling and screaming at the line to reach “the final destination.” People were trying to spruce up before entering this final room, since photographs would be taken there. This activity only increased my discomfort at the line, as there was plenty of wriggling on the queue. Only four people manned this final room. It was a three-hour-long ordeal and, when I came out, it was afternoon. During this long stint, it was impossible not to notice that some people, with the help of the security personnel, had ready access to various windows and rooms. There were grumblings from people standing and suffering in the line but all seemed resigned to such “practices.” It was an open secret and people just wanted to get it over with than rise up in rebellion. Still, there were some dissenting voices, mine included, and that did bring about some agents having to relent their agency duties, albeit only for a while. Later, when in my car and headed home, I used my phone to look up the total area covered by the Agargaon passport office. I found that the people residing in over 20 police stations within Dhaka City and the greater Dhaka district fall under the aegis of this office: From Paltan, Motijheel, Ramna to Dhanmondi, Mirpur, Shahbag to Gulshan, Badda, Tejgaon to Dhamrai, Savar, Ashulia -- anyone requiring a passport will have to come to this small location in Agargaon. What would be the number of people living in the area of these 20 plus police stations? It boggles the mind. There are two other regional offices, at Jatrabari and at Uttara, with their own specified areas of coverage but only two are not much help to ease the rush at the Agargaon office. I can draw only two conclusions for the authorities to allow only one passport office to cover such a vast area and such a vast number of people: They treat the “common” people like the cattle that would soon come to all the qurbani markets, and they are positively encouraging the business of the agents who would make things easy for a “nominal” fee. I, however, only paid a tip to the parking attendant outside the office building for his whole-hearted co-operation in navigating my car out of the jumble of cars, autos, rickshaws, etc, without any incidents. Many of the young men and women usually come here for a passport as a first step to go abroad and work as unskilled/semi-skilled labourers in “hostile” foreign countries. Many of them will live in an alien land with the barest consideration to their personal comfort so that they can remit the major portion of their earnings home. This remittance would swell the foreign exchange reserve of the country, and the ministers, and the central bank officials, in their glitzy suits or hand-crafted panjabis, would sing glories of the hard-working migrants. Songs that are nothing less than “crocodile tears” considering the hassle at the passport office, the subsequent harassments faced by migrant workers, coming home for a short visit at the airports, and the almost non-existent assistance from the embassies at times of various problems faced by these foreign-currency earners in a land far away from their little village in Comilla, or Feni, or Pirojpur, and so on. Pity to a country that gives so little value to the masses that toil the most for its prosperity. SM Shahrukh is a freelance contributor.
It was a drizzly day, some would even call it pesky for the inconveniences such days often cause. The day fell between the weekend and the official holiday on August 15 -- it was a “forlorn” working Sunday.
If one took that day off from work, one would have had a four-day spell of holidays, suitable for a quick trip “home” or a pleasing getaway to a vacation spot, away from the humdrum metropolis.
I, therefore, expected that the city traffic would be somewhat light, and, indeed, I was somewhat right. I also thought that the rush at the passport office at Agargaon would be less oppressive … I was absolutely wrong.
The moment I entered through the security arch, accompanied by an ear-piercing beep, I was in a “sea of people.”
Men and women had different queues, of course, with the line for men 10 times as long as that for women. New passports, renewals, reporting loss of such, etc, all in the same line.
I stood in a line that was rather serpentine in shape and it went around, forwards and backwards. It was impossible to see the “head of the snake” whence I stood at the beginning. The line moved, me with it, in batches, after gaps of several minutes. People, a lot younger than I, were almost swooning in the damp heat.
Most of the occupants of the long queue were young men: Some chatting, some staring blankly with a look of awe, some with their heads resting on the divider iron-pipe; and there was the relentless screeching cry from the security arch as more and more people kept entering the premises. At one point, I came parallel with the line for the ladies.
Finally, I reached the end and found a table manned by three overworked bored officials, one of whom gave me a form to fill before I proceeded to the next level.
This new form is not available in the website but who is listening to your complaints?
So I proceeded to the next level on the third floor. All the seats were taken by people who had come with the applicants, with toddlers sleeping in some chairs. I needed a place to fill the form.
