The Dhaka Times Desk Passport validity, pages and fees are being extended with both 5 and 10 year options.
The Ministry of Home Affairs has said that the general fee for a 10-year passport will be Tk 4,000 and the emergency fee will be Tk 7,000. However, the Ministry of Finance has agreed to set this fee at 5,500 and 11,000 taka.
According to media reports, a summary prepared to be sent from the Ministry of Home Affairs to the Cabinet said that in view of the current situation, the passport validity and the number of pages should be increased in order to make passport services easier and more up-to-date in view of the growing demand for passports. It is also mentioned in the summary that it is necessary to fix and re-fix the passport fee in this regard.
It is known that Article 591-0 of the Passport Rules 1974 mentions the validity of the passport that both the validity and renewal of the passport shall be limited to 5 years. In this law, it was said that the rules should be amended to make the validity of the passport 10 years.
Citing the sources of the Directorate of Passports, media reports said that currently two types of passports are issued in the country. One is an emergency passport and the other is a general passport. Each of these passport books has 48 pages. The current fee for emergency passport is 6 thousand taka, along with VAT, another 900 taka has to be paid. Half of the normal passport fee i.e. 3000 taka and VAT 450 taka. A fee of Rs 300 is charged for any type of change in passport.
A senior official of the Ministry of Home Affairs said that the decision to extend the validity of the passport was made based on the recommendation of the top officials of the embassies of Malaysia, United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia, Bangladeshi worker-dominated countries.
On the other hand, in order to protect the continuity of employment of Bangladeshi workers in Gulf countries including the United Arab Emirates, Mohammad Imran, the ambassador of Bangladesh to the United Arab Emirates, has given a semi-official letter (DO letter) to the senior secretary of the Ministry of Home Affairs, recommending that the validity of the passport be extended to 10 years immediately.
Meanwhile, even if the validity of the passport is extended, the number of pages in the book should be kept at 48. Because, currently the government has a contract with a foreign organization for the supply of MRP books. It will not be possible to extend the pages of the book until that contract expires. Besides, several lakhs of printed books are stored. If the pages are extended, those books will remain unused.
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