The government is going to home deliver Machine Readable Passports (MRP) to six lakh expatriates in Malaysia, as regular passport holders may face problems from November 24, 2015 due to cancellation, officials said.
Due to the guidelines of the International Civil Aviation Organisation, the government has to convert all Bangladeshi passports to machine readable versions by November 2015.
Bangladeshi expatriates in Malaysia will pay an extra US $18, over the Tk3,000 (for normal processing) or Tk6,000 (for speedy processing) as delivery charge to get their MRP passports sent to their addresses from the Bangladesh embassy in Malaysia.
A senior official of the home ministry said 90% of Bangladeshi expatriates, especially those in the Middle East countries, do not hold MRP passports.
Recently, expressing concern over the slow progress, labour secretaries of Bangladesh missions in 21 countries urged the government to expedite the process.
The home ministry official also said Bangladesh may miss the MRP deadline if the civil aviation authority did not speed up the process.
The home ministry sent a proposal to the cabinet committee on public purchase on hiring a company to home deliver MRPs to Bangladeshi expatriates in Malaysia to speed up the process. The proposal will be placed on the purchase committee meeting next Sunday.
Senior Home Secretary CQK Mustaq Ahmed said the project had been sent to the purchase committee for approval.
He said since this was a new type of project it had to be thoroughly scrutinised and as a result it was a time consuming process.
As per the ministry proposal, MRPs will be delivered to Bangladeshi expatriates in Malaysia by a foreign company.
Most expatriates there live and work outside Kuala Lumpur, the Malaysian capital. They would have to stay in the city if they wanted to collect the passport from the embassy. The proposal estimated that they would have to spend 500 Malaysian ringgit, equivalent to US $150, for two days of stay at Kuala Lumpur.
So the home ministry proposed to cut this cost by outsourcing the work of collecting the old passports and giving new MRPs to the expatriates. The home ministry floated a tender last April under the project titled “Collection of MRP enrolment data and related services incidental to and distribution of MRP among Bangladeshi citizen at sight in Malaysia.”
Malaysian companies Data-edge-i-people Consortium obtained the highest number (89.37 %) while HeiTech Padu Berhad (71.91%) stood second as ranked by the tender evaluation committee. The committee selected Data-edge-i-people Consortium for the job and the project will be completed within one-and-half years.
According to the proposal, total cost of the project would be Tk84.24 crore.
The government estimates that there are 30-35 lakh expatriates in Saudi Arabia, 11-12 lakh in United Arab Emirate, and 5-7 lakh in Malaysia.
