IN THE recent past, the government has taken significant steps and invested hefty sums from the public exchequer to improve the quality of passport services, but public suffering at passport offices continues. A photograph published in the New Age on Monday shows people crowding in long queues either to get their documents verified or to pick up their passports at the Immigration and Passport Department in Dhaka. Passport applicants say that the average wait time for any services at the Agargaon passport office is four hours. A young man, who had submitted his application for a passport after spending about eight hours at the office on March 20, was still waiting for his passport and unsure when exactly he would receive it. Another woman from Narsingdi registered her complaint with an on-duty Ansar platoon commander, but received no immediate redress. Elderly citizens have complained about the general mismanagement and lack of disregard for public comfort at the passport office, as there is no seating arrangement for them. The business-as-usual response of the officials at the passport office is that they are severely understaffed to provide service to about 2,100 applicants a day.

For an improved service at the Agargaon office in Dhaka, the government has opened two offices in the capital’s Basila and Aftabnagar. The decentralisation however, has so far failed to improve service delivery. Instead of recruiting new officials, a group of staff were transferred from the department to the Basila immigration office. While ordinary people are crowding and struggling to get public services at the regional office, the VIP centre in Dhaka dedicated to providing services to parliamentary members and other dignitaries in the country remains empty. The digitisation of the application process has been introduced to make the passport application process hassle-free and to eliminate the middlemen. In reality, the middlemen are reportedly still in operation and extorting people, alluring them with expedited service. Many applicants, particularly people from rural areas without access to electronic devices or adequate digital literacy, say that the digitisation has made the process inaccessible. The quality of services at other divisional offices is no different. On February 27, around 900 passport seekers waited in a long line for several hours but could not access any service because of a server outage at the Chattagram Divisional Passport Office.

It is clearly evident that inadequate human resources, inefficiency, poor management, and corruption at the immigration and passport offices have contributed to the declining quality of services for passport applicants. The government must, therefore, immediately conduct a quality assessment of passport services at Dhaka and other offices across the country and identify the loopholes that have created chaos and indiscipline in service delivery. It should expedite the recruitment process to address the chronic crisis of human resources. At the same time, the government must tackle the problem of corruption in the passport issuance process.