The Directorate of Immigration and Passport today signed a deal with Veridos GmbH, a German company, to inaugurate E-passport service in the country.

Director General (DG) of the directorate Major General Md Masud Rezwan today signed the 10-year long contract with the German company at the Bangabandhu International Conference Centre in Dhaka.

Home Minister Asaduzzaman Khan Kamal was present at the signing ceremony of the agreement as the chief guest.

Based on the contract, the company will provide any kind of service related to E-passport and will distribute 3 crore passport booklets to the people, the minister said adding that around 100 employees of the directorate will also be taken to Germany for training on delivering the services.

With this, Bangladesh today became the 119th country in the world to start the usage of E-passports, the minister said adding that “Bangladesh Armed Forces introduced machine-readable passports (MRPs) in the country in 2010 for the first time”.

However, MRP service is not enough to combat passport fraudulence and mismanagement in the country, the minister added.

The minister also said that the MRP service will continue until E-passport service is implemented.

A total of Tk 4,569 crore was spent for this project, the minister mentioned.

This step has been taken to ensure that the flow of Digital Bangladesh is continued, and to make the usage of passport easier and less time consuming, he added.

At present, there are over 2 crore people of the country has machine-readable passports.