Bangladesh after its independence has gone for many cultural and social changes. One of these changes attributed by the globalization is encouraging our nationals to seek fortunes where the opportunity exists. This led to the surge in people traveling abroad for job, business, tourism, etc. Bangladesh also witnessed the phenomenal growth in people traveling to various destinations for job and business. This required streamlining the immigration procedures to quickly process the passengers at immigration points ensuring security by screening forged travel documents. This led to adoptation of new “technical Standard 3.10” adopted by the International Civil Aviation Organisation (ICAO) and a parallel Amendment 19 to Annexure 9 of the Chicago Convention on Internatonal Civil Aviation (one of the two main multilateral treaties governing international air transportation) took effect on 11 July 2005. This requires all passports issued by countries that are party to the Chicago Convention, and/or whose laws require compliance with ICAO technical standards, to include a machine-readable version of the basic passport data (name, nationality, passport number, etc.) in all passports issued on or after 1 April 2010.

In one of the earliest attempt to comply with the international obligation a project was taken under the Support to ICT Task Force Project (SICT) under ministry of planning to create the capability of issuing machine readable passport (MRP) from only Dhaka Regional Passport Office at Agargaon, Dhaka while continuing issuing the old passports from other passport issuing offices. A technical team comprising officials from Department of Immigration and Passports, SICT formulated the requirement and tender was floated. Millennium Information Solution Ltd was selected for the job. However, at that point Ministry of Home Affairs constituted a team comprising members from the ministry and Bangladesh University of Engineering and Technology (BUET) headed by the additional secretary of Ministry of Home to prepare a detailed proposal for implementing MRP in Bangladesh.

The committee made extensive study visits to number of countries and decided not to proceed with the SICT project.

The technical team for MRP comprising Professor Lutful Kabir of BUET recommended that in view of the national security and promoting national skills BUET can be entrusted with the design and implementation of the MRP.

The Ministry of Home Affairs decided to appoint a full time consultant for the implementation of the MRP and also the National ID. The consultant was appointed and the consultant formulated a tender document for two stage bidding. In the second stage of the bidding only two companies from Germany, Bundesdruckerei GmbH and Giesecke & Devrient (G&D) participated in the bidding process and the lowest bidder G&D was selected at a cost of BDT 1546 crore. The final approval by the cabinet purchase committee was declined in the year 2006 because the project for MRP was not approved by the Planning Commission and the tendering procedure was not consistent with the Public Procurement Act.



During the tenure of the caretaker government International Organization for Migration (IOM) provided with a Dutch consultant and a tender document was prepared for floating tender. The caretaker government left the issue of MRP for the elected government to handle. Many meetings were held at the Ministry of Home Affairs and Department of Immigration and Passports for the implementation of the MRP where Professor Lutful Kabir strongly recommending for Institute of Information Technology, BUET’s role in the MRP project implementation while other stakeholder’s of MRP project recommending bringing experienced consultant as very little time is left to meet the ICAO deadline. Later a EOI was floated and an International Consulting Firm from Germany was recommended for hiring as consultant for two years for BDT 9 crore.

In the meantime the project proposal was approved at the ECNEC with the recommendation to utilize the Bangladesh Army’s technical and managerial expertise which it has gained through implementation of the National Electoral Roll project. MoU was signed between the Army and the DIP and a project director along with few officers from the army, air force and navy were deputed to the project along with DIP officers. This project team prepared a bidding document in consultation with experts from BUET, Dhaka University, BCC, Special Branch, International Organization for Migration and other stake holders. The tender was floated and received in the last week of the October 2009. Though the work was scheduled for award by the first week of December 2009 but due to over enthusiastic lobbying by the various bidders and local partners of International companies the work order was awarded to the lowest responsive bidder IRIS Berhrad from Malaysia on February 2010.

It is a great achievement for the project team, the officers and staffs of the DIP who have through their dedication and hard work are able to provide all logistic and technical support for the government to come to the decision of awarding the contract. The project team has also done a laudable job in ensuring the implementation of the project in time even after the delay of awarding of the contract. The color of the new passport is green, the diplomatic is red and the official is blue. The cover of the new passport is made of high quality cloth material. The passport contains security features in the form of micro text, water mark, UV Print, biometrics and other security features to ensure acceptability of the passport at international immigration points. The inclusion of biometrics data will ensure one person one passport.

This is a great achievement for the government towards realization of the dream ‘Vision 2021-Digital Bangladesh’. In my opinion the biggest winner from the successful implementation of this project are ‘The People of Bangladesh’ whose suffering at the international immigration will come to an end and our citizen will get due honor at international immigration after a wait of nearly 10 years.

Acknowledgement : MRP & MRV Project Authority, DIP

CJ WEB

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