1.5m people await inordinately for driving licences

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Md Ashir Molla is all set to go to Saudi Arabia. All he needs is a professional driving licence. He applied for the licence at Bangladesh Road Transport Authority (BRTA) in the capital’s Mirpur back in April, 2019. Later, he paid the government fee for the smart card licence. His fingerprint and picture were also taken within one month. BRTA gave him a receipt.

Ashir Molla was scheduled to get his licence on 14 November 2019, but when he turned up, he was given another date. This time the receipt had 23 April 2020 as the day of issuing the licence.

However, on 23 April, 2020, Ashir Molla was given yet another date, this time 5 January 2021. However, Ashir Molla still has not got the licence. He was given yet another date on 5 January. At the moment, he is scheduled to get his driving licence on 13 December this year. Ashir Molla is still in doubt about getting the licence even after three years.

What is the problem? It has been learnt that about 1.5 million people like Ashir Molla are suffering the same way due to the delay in appointing contractors and the race among the contractors. Most of them have been wandering around the BRTA office for the last 18 to 30 months to get the licence.

This correspondent spoke to Ashir Molla at the BRTA office in Mirpur on 30 May. He said, “I have invested all my savings and taken loans to go to Saudi Arabia. They have changed the date of issuing the license four times. I am not in a position to wait till December at the moment. I am on the verge of utter ruin.”

Same is the situation of Ashraf Hossain from Sylhet. Speaking to Prothom Alo over mobile phone, he said he has arranged a driver's visa from Saudi Arabia. However, he cannot attach that visa to his passport as he hasn't got his driving licence yet. If he had got the licence in time, he would have been in Saudi Arabia now. Ashraf completed all the processes for the driving licence at the BRTA office in 2019. He was scheduled to get the licence in October last year. Now he is re-scheduled to get that on 18 October.

Head of an organisation affiliated with manpower export said there is a huge demand for drivers in the Middle East. Accommodation and salary are also good in this profession. But the cost of this visa is about half that of other visas. It costs 7,000 riyals a year to renew a visa for another profession. While the driver's visa costs only 800 riyals.

People responsible for the crisis

According to the sources in the Ministry of Road Transport and Bridges and BRTA, the crisis is due to the competition between two contractors and the subsequent cancellation of tenders. Several departments also got involved in this scuffle between these two contractors. This results in delays in hiring contractors.

Contractor firm Tiger IT is in charge of printing the driving licences at the moment. Their contract with the BRTA is about to expire on 22 June.

ABM Mohiuddin, project director of Tiger IT, said, “We have delivered almost all the cards as per the contract. If BRTA asks us to supply further new cards, we will do so. Apart from this, we have nothing to do in this regard.”

According to the last agreement with the BRTA, signed on 23 June 2016, Tiger IT had to provide 1.5 million smart card licences in 5 years. However, due to the high demand, they had provided more than 1.4 million licences within September 2019. After that the supply of cards declined. Only 44,000 cards were distributed in the next 20 months. According to the agreement, they have 30,000 cards in hand.

The BRTA had two options to keep the supply of the cards uninterrupted. First, they could have allocated additional funds for Tiger IT to provide cards in the remaining time of the contract or they could have hired a new contractor.

Meanwhile in mid-2019 Tiger IT was blacklisted by the World Bank for 9 years on the allegations of discrepancies in a project of the Election Commission (EC) related to smart card printing. In such a circumstance, BRTA did not want to sign an agreement with Tiger IT for additional cards. Then on 10 June 2019, they called for a new tender for supplying 3.5 million smart card licences. After changing some conditions and extending the deadline for submitting the tender in phases, the BRTA shortlisted three companies for the project. They are - Selp Cards Solutions in France, Madras Security Printers in India and Percetakan Keselamatan Nasional in Malaysia. The French company chose IBCS-Primax Software Limited as their agent. But the Tiger IT could not take part directly as it was blacklisted. However, a source said that they had a secret agreement with IBCS-Primax.

On the other hand, Logic Forum, an associate company of CNS, became an agent of Madras Printers. CNS had got all the contracts out of the tenders called by the BRTA for the customer services in the last decade.

According to the sources from the BRTA, Selp Solution was the lowest bidder while Madras Printers (Logic Forum) and Percetakan Keselamatan Nasional of Malaysia became second and third respectively.

According to the sources of the Ministry of Road Transport and Bridges, Madras Printers told the BRTA and the bridges ministry during different phases of evaluating the tenders that lowest bidder Selp Solutions’ ISO certificate is expired. They also mentioned a few more flaws. BRTA suspended the tender after getting evidence of those allegations.

The same bidders in the second phase

The tender in the second phase was called on 20 January 2020. The number of licences was increased to 4 million that time. However, the names in the shortlist remained the same.

That time the lowest bidder was Madras Printers. They got the contract for Tk 1.2 billion. They fixed the price of a card at Tk 300.6. The second lowest bidder was Selp Solution with Tk 1.32 billion. They fixed the price of a card at Tk 331.15.

Percetakan Keselamatan Nasional was disqualified. The Malaysian company is said to have acted as a dummy of the Madras Printers.

BRTA signed a deal with the Madras Printers on 29 July, last year. They got the letter to start the work in September. As per the agreement, the Madras Printers had to provide the licences within three months which already had ended in December. However, they are yet to provide any cards.

The sources in the Ministry of Road Transport and Bridges said there were conditions in the tender ensuring foreign tours for the officials twice. Besides, the contractor was provided with two microbuses and a double cabin pickup. On the other hand, the contractor had to bear all the costs of the pickup for five years. But the government is discouraging both foreign travel and buying cars with the project money.

Three officials each from Logic Forum on behalf of Madras Printers and BRTA signed the deal to provide the licences. One of them was Tariqul Islam, executive officer of Logic Forum. When asked about smart card licence supply, he told Prothom Alo on 30 May that they only look after the administrative issues and refused answering any question regarding the date of issuing the licence or their preparation for the project. He also advised this correspondent to contact the Madras Printers in this regard. On the same day, Madras Printers was contacted by Prothom Alo through an email, but they did not reply.

According to BRTA sources, Mostak Ahmed Liton, brother-in-law of CNS’ managing director (MD) Munir Uz Zaman Chowdhury, used to attend various meetings and bids on behalf of Madras Printers and Logic Forum during the tender process.

Besides, the nephew of the MD of CNS was also present at different meetings, who introduced himself only as Salman Jitu. When asked about this, Salman told Prothom Alo that he only looks after the development issues. He does not know anything else.

When asked about the overall situation, BRTA chairman Nur Mohammad Majumder told Prothom Alo that issuing licences would start normally from this month. Due to coronavirus pandemic the contractors cannot provide the licences in time.

When asked about the competition of the contractors, he said, “I don’t have any idea about this. The appointment of contractors was delayed due to some procedural complications.”

On 30 May, from 11 am to 12 noon, more than two hundred license applicants were seen in line in front of the license supply counter of the BRTA office in Mirpur. None of them had got the license on the scheduled date. Everyone has been asked to come in January next year. It usually takes two weeks to a month to get a license at normal times.

Iftekharuzzaman, executive director of Transparency International Bangladesh (TIB), told Prothom Alo that first of all this is an administrative failure of the BRTA. They have to take responsibility for the sufferings and loss of a lot of people. Apart from this, there is also the issue of delay in hiring public procurement contractors. As a result, the risk of corruption through collusion prevails. It is also important to look at whether people are suffering because of the efforts of the BRTA officials to appoint companies of their choice.

*This article, originally published in Prothom Alo print and online edition, has been rewritten in English by Ashish Basu