Bangladeshi embassy reminds residents about new passport rules

ABU DHABI // The Bangladeshi government reminded its citizens that rules that forbid residents to travel abroad using handwritten passports would be strictly implemented.

“If anybody travels from the UAE on a handwritten passport he wouldn’t be able to come back on the same [passport] until he gets a new machine-readable passport (MRP),” said Muhammad Imran, Bangladeshi ambassador to the UAE.

The government had set November 24 as a deadline for expats to acquire new passports. All handwritten passports were to be converted per the deadline set by the International Civil Aviation Organisation, which is phasing out all non-MRPs to improve safety.

The embassy claimed it had converted 95 per cent of the UAE’s about 700,000 Bangladeshi residents’ handwritten passports to MRPs, which are tamper-proof.  “The remaining 5 per cent are those who are still in their slumber, but things are almost done. But if they turn up to the mission we will accept the application for replacement,” Mr Imran said.

“The replacement of all old documents with the new digital ones was a big concern for us all. The new passports are not easy to tamper with because they contain plenty of security features,” he said.

Mr Imran said the message seemed to be getting through to residents, and he had not heard of any cases of travellers being caught trying to fly with old passports.

The Nepalese government has also barred travel for those citizens who failed to obtain new travel documents.

“So far, about 78,000 MRPs were issued to Nepalese expats in the UAE, although most of them already had it from home, because the government had strictly implemented new document rules back home, said Dhananjay Jha, the Nepalese ambassador.

“Still, about 10 to 12 people come every day to replace their old documents,” he said.

About 300,000 Nepalese live in the UAE and about 99 per cent who had travelled in the past four years to the UAE had new digital passports, he said.

They replaced their documents when they had gone home on holidays, Mr Jha said.