Ministers irked by poor performance

Concerned by the failure of Malaysian company IRIS Berhad in enrolling expatriates for machine readable passports (MRP) timely, the government yesterday decided to increase capacity of its missions abroad to issue the new passports.

If IRIS failed to speed up its job immediately, its contracts would be cancelled and the job would be done through the missions and also by appointing new companies.

A high-level meeting held at the expatriates welfare and overseas employment ministry decided this.

Ministers and high officials at the meeting were unhappy with the performance of project officials, the Department of Immigration and the IRIS. One minister even said that the government and Bangladeshi expatriates were being held hostage by the IRIS.

Officials of the IRIS have been asked to appear at the next meeting on March 19 to explain as to why they failed to do their job despite repeated warnings over the last one year, meeting sources said.

Expatriates' Welfare Minister Khandker Mosharraf Hossain came down heavily on the company and also the officials of the MRP project for making uncertain the fate of several million expatriates.

He expressed doubt whether 37 lakh expatriates, who are still carrying the old hand-written passports, would get the new MRPs before the November 24 deadline set by the International Civil Aviation Organisation (ICAO).

After the deadline, foreign countries may not accept the old passport and a large number of the expatriates may be sent back home, hitting hard remittance which is a lifeline of the country's economy.

According to a report placed by a senior official of expatriates welfare ministry, the situation in the three major labour receiving countries -- Saudi Arabia, the UAE and Malaysia -- was of particular concern.

"About 35 lakh expatriates are living in the three countries but only 10 lakh of them have MRPs. And it was because of the failure of the IRIS," said the official.

If the MRP issuance was not expedited, he feared that most of the expatriates would not get the new passport, which would put Bangladesh in a debacle.

In the meeting, Minister Mosharraf wanted a number of explanations from Project Director Brig Gen Masud Rezwan but he could not explain everything, sources present at the meeting claimed.

Some of his explanations, including that of IRIS's obstruction to integrating new passport offices with the mainframe, were not acceptable and the meeting decided to involve Buet experts to know the facts, said officials at the meeting.

He said the government was going to purchase necessary equipment and involve sufficient manpower to speed up MRP issuance through Bangladesh missions, especially in Saudi, the UAE and Malaysia.

The project director had opposed the idea in the meeting.

Foreign Minister AH Mahmood Ali, State Minister for Home Asaduzzaman Khan, Principal Secretary to the Prime Minister Abul Kalam Azad, secretaries of foreign and home and other senior officials of ministries concerned were present.

The ministers and officials were surprised to see no IRIS representative at the meeting.

Pointing to a retired major in the meeting, the project director had said the retired major was representing the IRIS. But the state minister for home said he never saw the major in any past meetings. He asked as to why IRIS had no representative in the meeting, another official present in the meeting said.

"Do you understand how we are held hostage to the IRIS? One crore expatriates will be held hostage and it will be a debacle," Minister Mosharraf was quoted as saying to the project director in the meeting.

A number of officials raised the issue of non-cooperation of the IRIS for which MRP issuance by the missions were being hampered.

The project director said IRIS would provide software and authorisation.

However, IRIS had been refusing to give that for more than a year.

Minister Mosharraf asked the project director to tell IRIS to provide the software right now. "We don't have time to waste," sources quoted him as saying.

After the meeting, Mosharraf told reporters that the government would do everything to ensure the MRPs for expatriates before the deadline.