Dubai Bangladesh Consulate has officially inaugurated the National Identity Card (NID) application process for expatriate Bangladeshis living in the UAE.

Election Commissioner Brigadier General (retd) Ahsan Habib Khan inaugurated the program as the chief guest at the Bangladesh Consulate in Dubai on Thursday (July 13). It was presided over by Consul General BM Jamal Hossain.

Bangladesh Consulate's Labor Secretary Fakir Manwar was the special guest at the event, Muhammad Abu Zafar, Bangladesh's ambassador to the Emirates.

The Bangladesh Embassy in Abu Dhabi and Bangladesh Consulate in Dubai started the trial work of smart card from last June 13. Then these two missions started the application process from the beginning of this month with trained manpower.

Earlier, a technical team of the Election Commission was staying in the United Arab Emirates from May 18 to May 31 to train the embassy staff.

After that, an administrative and technical team of 18 members including Director General of NID Registration Wing of Election Commission AKM Humayun Kabir and Director General of Consular and Welfare Wing of Ministry of External Affairs came to the Emirates to supervise the work of giving NID through missions.

The chief guest said that this is a pilot project through the Emirates, which will be expanded to other countries of the world if successful.

Many expatriates have mismatched information between their national identity cards and passports. Emirati expatriates want to amend the national identity card for the solution.

Ambassador Abu Zafar said that it is not possible to correct it at the moment For now only applications for new national identity cards will be accepted. However, in the future, arrangements may be made to introduce corrections.

Earlier on July 10, the Bangladesh Embassy in Abu Dhabi also inaugurated the national identity card issuing program.