The Election Commission (EC) teams will visit various Middle East countries soon as part of its initiative to enlist expatriate Bangladeshis in the voter list.
Five groups, each consisting of four to five members, were formed to register the expats as voters and for providing them with national identity cards.
Over 10 million Bangladeshi expats are staying in 157 countries, with higher numbers in the Middle East, Europe and America. Many of these expats have failed to enlist in the voter list and do not have NIDs.
The initiative to enlist expat voters was taken during the Shamsul Huda-led EC. The continued till the commission led by Kazi Rakib Uddin. Now, the incumbent Nurul Huda-led EC is trying to accomplish the task.
The commission on July 8 held a meeting, chaired by joint secretary and Director (Operations) of National Identity Registration Wing Md Abdul Baten.
Meeting agenda documents show that the EC will conduct both online and offline registrations but there were some major problems to implementing online registration.
The meeting discussed that the technical setup of a country may not be suitable for servers of Bangladesh. To resolve the issues, the EC teams will gather information and come up with a realistic plan, the official added.
They also discussed how the experiences of Dhaka’s passport offices can be used to run campaigns in Bangladeshi embassies and missions abroad.
As per the EC’s plan, the technical and non-technical teams, consisting of experts, will visit the countries and conduct a feasibility study on renting office, set up and manpower related expenditures; systems of voter registration, campaign and connectivity.
The first group, led by a system manager, will contact the passport section of embassies abroad via the Department of Immigration to find out what policy can be used for issuance of Machine Readable Passports.
It will collect information on connectivity and how to run campaigns, also take necessary action to send passports to the related person abroad after the passports are ready.
The second group will work for renting office premises via Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Ministry of Expatriates’ Welfare and Overseas Employment, and different embassies abroad. They will find out the existing rules of carrying computer servers and other information.
The third group will work on the budget and find out what steps the ministries can take to fix salary and allowance of officials.
The fourth group will try find out how the campaign can be run abroad for voter registration and what steps need to be taken.
The fifth group will work on the voter list and see if any amendments are needed to be made to the National Identity Registration Act.
“We are thoroughly verifying the legal issues of other countries. Issues like what support we may get from the embassies and how we can work on technical sides have to defined,” said EC’s NID registration wing Director General Brig Gen Mohammad Saidul Islam.
EC plans to send one or more teams to the Middle East countries each consisting of four to five members for feasibility study. Other teams will visit those countries later.
“Initially, we may send our team to Kuwait, then to Saudi Arabia, Qatar and Malaysia. Also we have plans to send teams to Europe and Canada. There are some complexities about passport as some expatriates do not have them,” Saidul said.