The election management body has taken an initiative to enroll as voters non-resident Bangladeshis (NRBs), whose number stands at over more than 10 million.
The Election Commission (EC) plans to start the voter enrollment process initially in Saudi Arab, the United Arab Emirates (UAE) and Malaysia — the three largest destinations of Bangladeshi expatriates.
A workshop will be arranged regarding this at the Bangabandhu International Conference Centre in Dhaka city on February 27.
Stakeholders, particularly the diplomats deployed in Bangladesh missions stationed in the countries that house a larger number of Bangladeshis, are expected to provide suggestions and opinions there.
After receiving suggestions, the EC will take the final steps in this regard.
Though there is no fixed timeline for implementing its initiative, it expects that the voter enrolment process can be launched by this year in some countries.
“We are trying our best to introduce the voter enrollment system for Bangladeshi expatriates in foreign countries as quickly as possible. We have already worked out technical matters,” said Election Commissioner Brig Gen (retd) Shahadat Hossain Chowdhury.
The EC has taken the initiative to ease the expatriates’ hazards in the voter registration process as many of them have to return to Bangladesh for a short period of time and they ultimately can’t be voters for their time constraint, he said.
Participating in the EC’s dialogue last year, many political parties suggested enrolling the expatriates as voters, he said.
He said a workshop will be held on February 27 with some 100 participants, including top diplomats from Bangladeshi missions in foreign lands, officials at the Expatriates Welfare and Oversees Employment Ministry and other agencies concerned.
“We’ll take our next steps and shape the modalities after receiving suggestions from the workshop,” said Shahadat Hossain, reports UNB.
EC officials said they are preparing four technical teams for Saudi Arab, two for the UAE and one for Malaysia to enroll expatriates as voters there initially and other countries in phases with the help of Bangladesh missions.
They said it will be possible to start registering expatriates as voters under a pilot project in March-April next.
Some 11.5 million Bangladeshis have gone to 157 countries across the world since 1976.