E passport bd.
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| E passport bd. |
At Hazrat Shahjalal International Airport in the capital, an e-gate has been installed to automate and speed up the immigration process. As a result, e-passport holders' immigration process will be completed in 18 seconds. This gate had previously been utilized in an experimental capacity 11 months and 8 days following its official inauguration on Monday.
Major General Ayub Chowdhury, Director General of the Passport Department, told Bhorer Kagoj that passengers began traveling through the e-gate at 12:45 p.m. on Tuesday, 11 months and 8 days after the inauguration.
When asked why travelers are using e-gate after such a long time, the director general explained that there was a slight delay caused by small technical issues.
The government aims to install 50 electronic gates at airports and land ports as part of the e-Passport and Automated Border Control (ABC) management project, according to Immigration and Passport Department (DIP) sources. Bangladesh is the first South Asian country to introduce an e-gate for e-passports.
On January 22, 2020, Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina launched the e-passport and autonomous border control system. The e-gate at Kamal Shahjalal International Airport was opened by Home Minister Asaduzzaman Khan on June 30, 2021. There was talk of initiating e-passport activities with the inauguration of Passport Service Week on April 24, 2016. In the G2G process, a Memorandum of Understanding was signed with Veridos GmbH in Germany one year later, on February 17, 2018.Then, in August of the same year, a high-level commission from the Ministry of Home Affairs' Security Services Department visited five companies from six countries. On the 10th of October, the report was submitted to the Prime Minister at the conclusion of the visit. On June 21, 2018, the project to introduce an e-passport and an automatic border control system was approved after many formalities. The project was signed with Veridos GmbH of Germany on July 19 of that year. This organization is responsible for the implementation of e-passports and e-gates.
