EC delegates head to Dubai to enlist Bangladeshi expats in voter list

Two Election Commission (EC) delegations departed for Dubai on Thursday to register Bangladeshi expatriates residing in the United Arab Emirates (UAE) as voters.

After undergoing training and completing the registration process by 1 June, both teams will return to Bangladesh, as stated in a press release by the deputy project director, Shahriar Alam

The programme will commence tomorrow at the Bangladesh Embassy in the UAE, where the two special EC delegations will register Bangladeshi expatriates in separate campaigns held in Dubai and Abu Dhabi.

The technical team members will install equipment, collect data, and provide hands-on training to the personnel involved. Considering the Rohingya community, the applications will be re-examined in the country following registration abroad.

Approved expatriates will receive smart national identity (NID) cards from the EC.

Based on the experience gained from this program in the UAE, similar initiatives will be launched in other countries with a significant Bangladeshi workforce.

The EC team, consisting of a system analyst, upazila election officer, assistant programmer, office assistant cum computer operator, iDEA project second phase network consultant, assistant programmer, and data entry operators from the national identity registration division of the election commission secretariat, will be responsible for preparing the voter list.

In 2019, the then Election Commission led by KM Nurul Huda initiated an online registration process in Malaysia, which was unfortunately halted due to the Covid-19 pandemic. However, the current commission led by Kazi Habibul Awal is making efforts to expedite the process.