Agargaon passport office: Bid to improve service ahead of PM's visit

For the past few days, there has been a rather surprising change in the way things go on at the Agargaon passport office in the capital.

Information is available without much hassle, queues of service-seekers are being properly maintained and there has been less shouting and screaming inside the otherwise chaotic headquarters of the Department of Immigration and Passport (DIP).

This sudden shift in the scenario there is because Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina is going to visit the office on Sunday to kick-off the first-ever Passport Week.

"The prime minister is coming. So, we want to keep things in order," a DIP director told The Daily Star on Wednesday. He wished anonymity.

However, brokers -- who, in collusion with some DIP staff, are notorious for fleecing service-seekers at the office -- are still active.

Even on Wednesday, a mobile court caught 20 brokers and sentenced them to different jail terms.

These petty criminals get the scope to run rampant because of the poor service quality of the DIP officials, allege many who go there to seek passport-related services.

"I have come to have my passport re-issued. Someone told me to stand in a queue on the ground floor. But I actually should have gone to the second floor," said Afroza Begum who had paid Tk 6,900 -- twice the fee for normal passports -- for getting her machine readable passport (MRP) in three days.

It took her 20 days to get the passport, she told this correspondent last month.

As per the DIP rules, an express or urgent passport should be delivered within seven working days and a normal passport in 21 working days.

Home Minister Asaduzzaman Khan Kamal on many occasions have told the media that people can get their passports by five or seven days after submitting the application.

But that barely happens in reality.

Mizanur Rahman of Mirpur needed his passport urgently to go on an official tour to Malaysia. He paid the express fee and applied for the passport on April 5 and he was given April 18 as the date for its delivery.

But when he came there on April 19, he was told that the passport was not ready yet.

"I have only a week before the Malaysia trip. If I don't get my passport timely, I may face problems in getting the visa. I might even miss the tour," a frustrated Mizanur told this correspondent at the DIP Agargaon office on Wednesday.

People are often made to go through unnecessary hassles if they do not want to pay the brokers, alleges Swapan Ahmed, who works at a private firm in Dhaka.

"I went to the DIP office to submit the application for an MRP as my manual passport had expired. When I reached the service counter after standing in a queue for two hours, an employee there asked for my identity card issued by my office.

"I insisted that it wasn't required but he was unyielding … Some fellow service-seekers then told me to pay the brokers or bribe the Ansar men on duty there but I would not."

Swapan had to go back home and come back the next day with the photocopy of his ID card.

"See, this is how the brokers are encouraged to fleece people," he said.

The Ansar members are supposed to help the people but they hardly do it, alleged Rafik Ahmed, another private service-holder.

"The Ansar men are the bosses of the brokers. They are the real brokers who take bribes for speeding up the application procedures and delivery of passports," he said.

This correspondent managed to talk to a broker at the DIP. He explained how they work with the Ansar men.

"We make the underhand dealings with the service-seekers. But it's the Ansar men who have connections with some DIP officials. So, they get the jobs done for us. In exchange, they get a cut of the money we take from the service-seekers."

However, Uzzal, the platoon commander of Ansar at the DIP, denied the allegations.

"My men here help the applicants only if they ask for help," he claimed.

Contacted, DIP Director General Brig Gen Masud Rezwan admitted that there were "some problems" in the service operations.

"It is true that people are fed up with the brokers. But we are conducting regular drives, catching them and handing them over to the police," he told The Daily Star, adding that many difficulties can be avoided if people become aware of their services.