Bangladeshi expats in UAE start getting NID cards from June

From the first week of June, expatriates in Dubai will be able to get smart cards through the Bangladesh Embassy. On May 18, an 11-member EC team will go to Abu Dhabi and start the process by training embassy officials in this regard.

Squadron Leader Shahriar Alam, Deputy Project Director of EC's Identification System for Enhancing Access to Services-IDEA-2 (Smart NID) project, confirmed this.

He said, going to Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates, other activities including training have been undertaken in the last half of this month. In this case, expatriate Bangladeshis staying in the country will get smart cards from the first of June.

EC Secretary recently. Jahangir Alam said that the United Arab Emirates will start the process by sending a team to Abu Dhabi, the capital of the United Arab Emirates, to vote expatriates. In that case each person will come to the embassy and give the information to the outsourcing manpower there. The information will go online to our concerned area, to the upazila or thana officer there. There they will verify if they find the truth then they will confirm. Then finger prints and other things will be taken. After that, we will make a smart card from here and send it to the concerned embassy through the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

The team that EC is sending to Abu Dhabi will be led by IDEA-2 Project Director (ID) Squadron Leader Saad Waiz Tanveer. The team of 11 members will stay in Abu Dhabi from May 18 to 31.

Although no first-time fee is payable to citizens, the embassy is required to pay a service charge of 50 dirhams per NID (1 dirham on the day of publication of the report). Applicant's name should be as per birth registration or education certificate. With the experience of this activity in the United Arab Emirates, the EC will take up this activity in other countries in consideration of the excess flow of remittances.

The commission led by KM Nurul Huda took up this initiative in 2019 after receiving the instructions from the Prime Minister's Office. On February 12, 2020, the EC launched the online voting process for UK expatriates. Earlier, this program was started on November 18, 2019 among UAE expatriates. Before that, on November 5 of the same year, the process of online application was inaugurated as part of inclusion in the voter list and issuance of Smart National Identity Cards to eligible Bangladeshis in Malaysia. After that, this opportunity was also introduced for Bangladeshis living in Saudi Arabia, Singapore and Maldives. At that time, there was a plan to provide NID from the embassy in the concerned country after verifying the application from the upazila of the concerned person by applying online. Then the plan to start this program through the embassy was stopped due to the corona epidemic.

According to related sources, five thousand and 138 people have applied to get NID as voters from six countries where online activities have started. EC has not yet investigated the applications of 4,610 of them. Only 475 people have been investigated, out of which the applications of 203 expatriates have been canceled citing various reasons. Besides, 53 applications are under investigation. That is, after completing the investigation in three years, the applications of 272 people have been approved, who are getting NID. In the last three years, 1,375 applications have come from the UAE, of which 1,254 have not been investigated, and only 63 applications have been approved.

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