Diplomats, official passport holders will enjoy the facilities
Bangladesh is going to sign visa-free agreement with 32 new countries soon to ease movement of diplomats and officials without visas among these countries.
Since 2009, Bangladesh inked deals with 14 countries for visa exemption facilities and the provision to include 32 more countries is in process, said officials of Security Services Division under Ministry of Home Affairs.
Currently, diplomats and official passport holders are enjoying visa exemption facilities in Indonesia, Chile, Turkey, Laos, Belarus, Cambodia, Philippine, India, Malaysia, Kuwait, Japan, Russia, Thailand, and Sri Lanka.
The government also delivers visa related services more conveniently to foreigners and the latest move is a part of it, said sources from Home Ministry.
In the last three fiscal years since 2015, a total of 15,57,766 foreigners visited Bangladesh with visas.
A sum total of 34 divisional and regional passport offices were built in 31 districts while construction for additional 33 regional passport office buildings in 33 districts is ongoing. The manpower of the Department of Immigration & Passport has also been increased simultaneously from 397 to 1184.
Construction of a modern personalized complex is also under progress in Uttara that will facilitate printing passports.
Four passport-application processing centres were installed in important offices including Bangladesh Secretariat and Dhaka Cantonment. Additional six visa cells were set up in Hazrat Shahjalal International Airport while manpower of Immigration & Passport Department was raised in nine immigration check posts.
The government has been issuing machine readable passport (MRP) and machine readable visa (MRV) since 2010.
Home Minister Asaduzzaman Khan Kamal said the government is working to imrpove the quality of life for the people.
Department of Immigration and Passport has successfully implemented MRP and MRV project in fiscal year 2017-18.
About 3.2 million MRP and 124,000 MRV were issued under the project that helped the government to earn Tk13,215.37 crore.
"Immigration activities became more dynamic with introduction of e-passport and e-gate in airports,” he added. (https://www.dhakatribune.com)
