Sri Lanka to purchase 750,000 e-passports without chips to face shortfall

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By Editor_1

COLOMBO – Sri Lanka will purchase up to 750,000 e-passports without electronic chips from a foreign firm chosen to provide the international travel documents to locals, Public Security Minister Tiran Alles said.

The island nation is facing a shortage of passports as the authorities failed to secure adequate quantities of the travel document before switching to the new e-passports, government officials have said.

Thales DIS Finland Oy has been chosen through a tender process to procure 5 million electronic passports at $5.06 per document. Alles said passports have been procured at $5.89 each from the earlier firm which has been chosen without any tender procedure since 2002.

“Originally, the new e-passports were to be issued from November. We have now moved forward the date and are getting the first set on October 20,” the Minister told reporters at a media briefing in Colombo on Monday (9)

“The company has agreed to provide up to 750,000 passports with a minimum of 350,000 in different stages. We will be getting them without chips because they are being given in advance.”

Long queues outside the passport office were seen last month as the existing quantity was not adequate to meet the current demand.  Thousands of Sri Lankans are leaving the country in the aftermath of the unprecedented economic crisis two years back.

Alles said the government asked the current supplier to provide additional passports to face the current crisis, but the company had asked the government to purchase a minimum of 500,000 documents.

“We don’t need that much because we only need around 100,000,” Alles said.

The long queues are now controlled using the police,  and the government has been trying to eliminate exploitation by middlemen who take an exorbitant fee to secure a passport for the average Sri Lankan, he said.

-economynext.com

Editor_1
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