Let’s Get Passport without bribe

Let’s Get Passport without "Bribe"

Getting a passport without any bribe in Bangladesh is a far cry.

In every step of getting a passport, mango people have to face countless forms of harassment.

Among all of them giving bribe in police verification is the acute one. In here it will be discussed thoroughly for a better understanding of the scenario.

At the very beginning, I have to say that all the police are not corrupted but very few of them are spoiling the name of the police department.

However, to get a new passport, police verification is a must. The government made the SB police accountable for this purpose. In Dhaka, it is conducted by the SB office at Malibag. 10-20 Sub-inspectors (SI) look after this task in Dhaka city. According to a survey of Transparency International Bangladesh (TIB), 75.3% applicants had to bribe the police during verification. The survey also shows that applicants in the Dhaka office have to give an average Tk. 500 to the SB police. From this, it is estimated that the SB under Dhaka Regional Passport Office annually receives approximately TK. 13.5 crore in a year directly from the applicants. This is only the scenario of Dhaka city; imagine it is happening all over the country.

In the report it has been also said that “Of those, who were victims of corruption and irregularities, 35.3 percent were victims of corruption or giving money beyond legal means, 27 percent victims of delay, 2.3 percent of failure to dispense duties, 0.2 percent victims of fraudulence and the rest faced other discrepancies.

In addition to that participant of the study said law enforcers 'deliberately' try to locate errors in the applications. They blamed SB officers for trying to extort clients by threatening to link them to militant outfits or political parties.

The participants said police do not visit their homes but make phone calls and ask them to meet at the local police stations or somewhere else. They demand bribes for a clearance and sometimes tell applicants to transfer the fund through mobile banking.

Moreover, during verification, the police ask awkward questions of the applicants and require them to produce documents such as educational certificates, house ownership documents, utility bills, job certificates etc. If applicants are unable to satisfy them, they have to give a high amount of bribe. However, even when the police find the given information correct they demand bribe outright, saying that the SP or ASP would not sign the report without a bribe. Every day hundreds of applicants have to come to the SB office, Dhaka for the verification report. If the police do not find the applicant at home during police verification or are not satisfied with the bribe offered, they ask applicants to come to the SB office with some documents, where they again use different pretexts to ask for a bribe.

An applicant whose permanent address is outside the jurisdiction of regional passport office suffers the most in the process of police verification since they have to bribe twice to SB officer in Dhaka as well as in local Thana.

After all the discussion I would like to state that in developing country like Bangladesh it has to be stopped as soonest. In every year we have a deficit in our annual budget. The government has to take loans from Banks to subsidize the requirements. If the money which has been taken as a form of bribe from the innocent people can be contributed in the annual budget then it would be a great help for the government. In addition to that, I think now a day’s we do not need police verification as almost all of us have NID or Smart Card. To issue a passport the authority needs to check the NID number and look into the Database to identify the applicant and then verify it on spot and give clearance to print the passport.