In the latest twist of the seemingly never ending saga of the machine readable passports (MRPs), we are now confronted with the defaulting Malaysian company IRIS that has apparently gotten away scot-free with Tk 50 crore. This fund was realised by the company as fees from expatriates who were promised MRPs. That money was supposed to be deposited in Bangladeshi missions abroad, but according to what authorities have made public, it was not done as per procedure. 

There has been some noise made by the Directorate of Passports (DIP) in an attempt to realise the money from this foreign company. But we are astounded as to why the ministries of home and foreign affairs are engaged in blaming each other and not taking steps so that our expatriate workers who have paid but not been delivered their passports, do not suffer.

It is unconscionable that a foreign contractor failed to deliver on a document as crucial as a passport. Authorities are hesitant to bring them to book and we do not know when the rest of the many hundred thousand MRPs will be delivered! Now why is that? We boast about the sacrifices made by our expatriate labourers who work under very difficult circumstances to send home the much needed billions of dollars in remittance; but shirk away at taking to task defaulting companies like IRIS and leave our young men in limbo in foreign lands. This is totally unacceptable and something must be done about it.