Bangladesh Smart Driving Licence Delivery in Limbo

Some one million Bangladeshi drivers are currently driving with an ‘acknowledgment slip’, but they are not able to apply for government and private jobs as they don’t have smart driving licence cards.

Additionally, around 300,000 people are unable to renew their driving licences even after applying up to two years ago.

The hold up in delivery is causing difficulties for people looking for driving jobs abroad.

According to the Dhaka Tribune, Madras Security Printers (MSP) and Bangladesh Machine Tools Factory (BMTF) are responsible for the situation as the Bangladesh Road Transport Authority (BRTA) had signed an agreement with MSP on 29 July 2020 – after the contract with Tiger IT, who previously delivered the cards, had ended.

As per the contract, MSP was supposed to provide four million cards in five years (June 2025). Of that amount, 900,000 cards were set to be delivered before December 2021.

But until July 2021, MSP managed to deliver only 7,400 cards and, as the backlog grew, the BRTA reached an agreement with the BMTF on 29 August 2021 on the printing of smart driving licences.

According to the agreement, the BMTF would start issuing the cards from October 2021 and provide 1.25 million driving licences before March 2022.

As it transpired, the BMTF could deliver only 300,000 smart driving licences before March.

BRTA officials say the problem will soon be solved as new printing machines are on their way.

‘The agreement with BMTF has been extended until September this year on the delivery of 900,000 smart driving licences,’ said Mahbub E Rabbani, director of BRTA.

‘So, by this time the backlog of driving licences will mostly be cleared as BMTF is going to install new machines by May,’ he told the Dhaka Tribune. According to the BRTA official, new printing machines are on the way to gear up printing activities. BMTF will be able to print 10,000-15,000 cards a day.

Meanwhile, MSP has already imported new machines from abroad in order to deliver smart cards more quickly. According to BRTA officials, MSP can deliver some 4,000 cards a day from May.