Migrants’ misery: Praying for a quick passport

Md Ashiquzzaman, a Bangladeshi migrant currently working in Malaysia, submitted documents on 2 February this year to the Bangladesh High Commission in Kuala Lumpur for renewing his passport. Three months later, he is still waiting and there is no update on the progress of his application.

Now, Ashiquzzaman is stressed out as his current passport is on the verge of expiring.

Ashiquzzaman's predicament resonates with thousands of other Bangladeshi migrants who are all passing anxious days before they can get their passport.

The amount of hassle in obtaining the ninth weakest passport in the world seems to be unending – forced to pay higher than official fees, bureaucratic red tape and a system working against efficiency.

In the age of Digital Bangladesh, to obtain a national identity (NID) card and e-passport, expatriates especially are facing problems – almost non-responsive complaint hotlines, no reply to online passport applications months after submission resulting in another round of submissions, no generation of barcode needed for application despite a two-week deadline, and wrong delivery slip numbers, among many others.

To air his grievance, Ashiquzzaman recently took to social media and wrote on the verified Facebook page of the Bangladesh High Commission in Kuala Lumpur.

"I hear more Bangladeshis will come. The problems we have not been solved properly (sic). Then we will have to face millions of problems as more Bangladeshis come," he wrote.

In the past five years, the demand for passports has more than doubled. Data from the passport office shows that it is delivering more than 35,000 passports a day.

Generally, there are rules for disposing of an emergency passport within two to seven days and ordinary passport within 15 days.

Major General Mohammad Ayub Chowdhury, director general of the Department of Passport and Immigration, said while they were delivering a lot of passports every day, he could not say how many applications were received per day.

Asked how many passports were in the backlog, he, again, failed to give any number, saying he did not have the information with him at the moment.

Another immediate headache for migrant workers is being forced to pay more for a passport than the fee fixed by the government.
Passport costs are also a reason behind high migration costs.

Mozammel Hoque, former cultural secretary of the Bangladesh Association of International Recruiting Agencies (Baira), said, "The government fee for getting a passport is Tk5,000. Here you have to pay Tk13,000-15,000. Why? Workers send remittances. Why should they be harassed like this to get a passport?"

In this situation, one of the government initiatives to ease the passport process was the introduction of hi-tech e-passports in 2019.

It was Bangladesh's entry into the global digitalised world. The move, however, is yet to pay any dividends.

New solutions, new problems

The introduction of e-passports in 2019 was meant to replace the old machine readable passport (MRP).

The e-passport is being provided on the basis of the information on the NID. If there are any mismatches in the information between the old MRP and the NID, then e-passport applications are immediately rejected.

A notice from the Divisional Passport and Visa Office, Agargaon, Dhaka says, "If there is any discrepancy between the previous passport and NID/BRC [birth registration certificate], the e-passport application is automatically stuck in the system software. The receipt is delayed."

The authorities, in such cases, request applicants to wait "patiently" till their passport is printed. But the length of the wait is not specified.

The DG of the department also said such discrepancies were very common and resulted in delays.

Sources say discrepancies often arise due to errors in the NID, which cost applicants the chance to get a passport.

Without specifying a number, they said a huge quantity of e-passports had been held up by passport offices across the country due to such mismatch in information, creating problems for many travellers and migrant workers.

The information in the NID may not always be the fault of the applicant. Sometimes a person's address can change – from when they were issued the MRP and when they got the NID.

There is currently no easy way to address these issues. But there can be other issues as well.

"My name is Md Motiur Rahman. But my NID shows my name as only Md Motiur. When I tried to renew my passport, I was refused. I then had to change my name through an affidavit," Motiur, a resident of Dhaka's Kalabagan area, told The Business Standard at the passport office in Dhaka's Agargaon recently.

"After completing all the procedures, I submitted my documents on 28 April to get the passport on an emergency basis. Now, I am waiting as per the authority's instructions," he added.

The parliamentary standing committee on the expatriate welfare ministry at a meeting on 17 April recommended easing the passport processes for migrant workers and identifying and resolving all e-passport related problems as soon as possible.

The meeting discussed the activities of the immigration and passport department to make their services fast and urgent for a disciplined, safe, regular, and responsible passport issuing process.

NID not enough to get rid of passport delivery hassle

Having an NID with all accurate information may not be enough to get a passport in some cases.

"People who are willing to go abroad have to face serious hassle to get a passport. If an aspiring migrant has an NID, why would he have to wait for at least one month for police clearance before the passport issuance?" Shamim Ahmed Chowdhury Noman, former secretary general of Baira, said to TBS.

He said it took a minimum of one month to get police clearance.

A police clearance, however, depends on whether a person has a case against him or not.

In this regard, Rajekuzzaman Ratan, member, Labour Migration Group of National Coordination Committee on Workers Education, said, "There are cases against 32 lakh people. Having a case cannot be an obstacle in issuing a passport."

Md Shahidul Alam, DG of the Bureau of Manpower, Employment and Training (BMET), said, "If I have an NID, why bother to get a passport? It's totally meaningless," he said, adding that emergencies can arise at any time compelling a person to immediately go abroad.

"If the passport process was made easier, many things could be done smoothly," he said.

The Bangladeshi passport ranked the ninth weakest globally as its holder can travel to just 40 out of 227 destinations around the world without a prior visa, according to the second quarter edition of the Henley Passport Index 2022.

The index released on 5 April by Henley and Partners placed Bangladesh at the 104th position among 112 spots.