Who'll bring it home?

A sum of Tk 50 crore does not seem to be any money at all to the people at the home and foreign ministries. The amount, which should have been in the government coffer, now lies with a foreign company.

Bangladeshi expatriates in Saudi Arabia and the UAE paid their hard-earned money in passport fees to Malaysian company IRIS Corporation Berhad. The money never made it to Bangladesh.

The reason is simple: Apparently, neither the home ministry nor the foreign affairs ministry wants it. The worst part is no official at the two ministries wants to take the responsibility to realise the money.

As an outsourcing company, IRIS realised fees from the expatriates to give them machine readable passports and the money was supposed to be deposited in the accounts of Bangladesh missions in Saudi Arabia and the UAE.

The IRIS has never been regular in doing that.

Finally, newly appointed DIP Director General Brig Gen Masud Rezwan yesterday came down heavily on IRIS officials for not paying up.

He asked IRIS officials to tell him how much it had deposited in Bangladesh government's accounts. The IRIS officials could not give any specific answer and sought more time.

The DG became furious and warned the firm that “holding government's money illegally is a criminal offence”, according to sources in a meeting held at the DIP yesterday.

He asked the company to deposit within 48 hours all government fees that have been lying with the company for more than a year, otherwise it would face the music, sources added.

“I asked them [IRIS officials] to place the full account of the money by tomorrow [today]. I also told them to hand over all passports it had not given to our people in Saudi Arabia,” Masud told The Daily Star last night.

The company took about 1.4 to 1.5 lakh printed MRPs from the DIP for Saudi Arabia and about 36,000 MRPs for the UAE, but it did not distribute those passports, Masud said.

Another company failed to deliver 2,000 MRPs in Malaysia, he said.

IRIS CEO Dato Hamdan, its International Sales Manager Bahjat Aman and five other officials came to Dhaka and attend the meeting with the DIP officials.

The two missions under the foreign ministry and the Department of Immigration and Passport (DIP), which is under the home ministry, issued several letters to IRIS, requesting it to deposit the money.

The company did not even respond to the letters and the government has not made any further requests in the last two months.

The Daily Star recently contacted the home minister, the ambassadors in Saudi Arabia and the UAE and other officials concerned and they all blamed each other.

“It's a matter of the foreign ministry,” said Home Minister Asaduzzaman Khan Kamal when asked what his ministry was doing to realise the money.

When mentioned that it was the home ministry which signed the contracts with the IRIS, he once again tried to shift the responsibility to the foreign ministry.

Under the contracts, the DIP was responsible for supervising IRIS and making the company accountable.

The DIP has been silent over the money issue.

“Since the fees are supposed to be deposited in the missions' accounts it is their [missions'] responsibility to monitor and maintain accounts,” Zeaul Alam, who was director general of the DIP until December 13, told this correspondent.

The foreign ministry was shifting blame as well.

“The DIP is responsible in this regard since the department signed the contracts with IRIS. It's not our job,” a director general of the foreign ministry said, requesting not to be named.

It also seems the Bangladesh missions that were supposed to monitor IRIS's data-collection job and keep accounts of passport fees are doing nothing to realise the money.

“The IRIS gave us some money. The company is yet to deposit Tk 10-12 crore but I don't have the exact figure,” said Golam Moshi, Bangladesh ambassador to Saudi Arabia.

He said the company did not deposit the fees regularly and that was why he did not have the details.

Bangladesh ambassador to the UAE Muhammad Imran refused to say anything.

“You better contact the DIP,” Imran said whenever asked how much money the IRIS deposited and how much was due.

Officials of the home and foreign ministries regularly meet senior IRIS executives in Dhaka, but do not put pressure on the company to deposit the money, sources said.

Against this backdrop, some officials of the DIP and the home ministry said they were not sure whether the hard-earned money of the expatriates would actually be realised.

A number of officials at the DIP said the IRIS should be served with a legal notice.

The Daily Star sent two emails to IRIS Senior Manager Bahjat Aman and Assistant Manager in Saudi Arabia project Kamal Bashah, requesting their comments. But the two did not respond.