Bangladeshis urged to replace old handwritten passports before deadline

Bangladeshis living in the UAE have until June next year to replace hand-written passports.

ABU DHABI // Bangladeshi officials are concerned that there are still more than 250,000 nationals in the UAE who have yet to replace handwritten passports with digital, machine-readable passports.

The deadline to replace the old documents is June 15 next year and many of the more than 700,000 Bangladeshis living in the UAE have not completed the process.

The embassy in Abu Dhabi and the consulate in Dubai have a capacity to process almost 1,000 passports a day, but at the moment they are processing only about 500.

After surge in passport renewals last year, the embassy doubled its capacity by renting another villa for consular services.

Mohammed Husain, a counsellor at the embassy, urged Bangladeshi residents to replace their old passports before the deadline.

He said he believed that those who had not upgraded passports were mainly those who worked with big companies whose passports were kept by their HR departments, which did not release the documents for processing.

He said that another problem was that when workers wanted to come to the mission on working days they did not get a day off to complete the process.

“We are afraid they will not be able to travel with the old document. But we still hope to achieve this target by March next year,” Mr Husain said.

“Some 450,000 passports have already been delivered to Bangladeshis in the UAE, and about 250,000 to 300,000 still need to be converted to digital.

“We have expanded our capacity and manpower but, unexpectedly, people don’t turn up.”

According to the International Civil Aviation Organisation, by the middle of next year no handwritten passport would be accepted at any airport in the world.

On average, about 250 people a day visited the embassy for passports and about 300 a day turned up at the consulate, Mr Husain said. At the beginning of the year the embassy alone was handling almost 600 cases a day, he said.

The mission has asked companies where Bangladeshis work to let their staff complete the replacement procedures.

“Workers who are in big companies and their passports are held with their companies are unable to come,” Mr Husain said.

“The problem is that they don’t give passports to labourers.”

The labour department of the mission was in constant touch with such companies in an attempt to to complete the process.

The changeover to digital passports was being taken to avoid forgery and identity theft, Mr Husain said.

The digital passport will be forgery and fake proof, nobody will be able to duplicate it, he said.

In Bangladesh, the process started in 2007, but did not begin in the UAE until 2010.

The embassy registers biometrics and digital photos at the mission and then dispatches the document to Dhaka.

The cost for the replacement is Dh125 for the labour category. All others cost Dh405. It takes 30 to 40 days to get the new passport, Mr Husain said.