Biometric Passport Updates from Nepal, Seychelles, and Bhutan
Biometric passports, often known as ePassports or digital passports, are one of today’s most popular e-government solutions. It has a microchip that holds the person’s personal information, including biometrics, differentiating it apart from other traditional forms of identification. Individuals’ faces, fingerprints, or iris scans are now kept in biometric passports as standardized data. Documents issued in one country may need a different set of biometric information than documents issued in another. Many countries throughout the world prefer a biometric turnkey solution for biometric passport implementation. Nepal, Seychelles, and Bhutan are on the verge of introducing biometric passports. Today, we’ll look at the most current updates for these countries.
Nepal will begin issuing e-passports
Nepal’s Department of Passports has declared that soon, biometric passports would be issued. At a ceremony in the department’s new facility in Tripureshwor, Foreign Minister Narayan Khadka will present the first electronic passport to 102-year-old historian Satya Mohan Joshi. The former passport office was at Narayanhiti.
Following the cancellation of three consecutive worldwide tender announcements by the previous KP Oli administration last year, the department is now ready to issue e-passports, which will ultimately replace the present machine-readable passports (MRP).
Nepal moved from handwritten to machine-readable passports in 2010, a long-delayed transition. Now, 11 years later, Nepal is issuing the second generation of e-passports based on International Civil Aviation Organization rules. Officials have welcomed this step as a competitive advantage for the country’s reputation.
Seychelles’ President gets the first biometric passport
Seychelles presented the first of its new biometric passports to President Wavel Ramkalawan last month at the State House. Personal information such as fingerprints, facial photos, and digital signatures are stored on a microchip in the biometric passport. Among some of the cultural and environmental features of the new passport are various flora and fauna species, the Seychelles clock tower, and the Aldabra Atoll.
“This implies a departure for immigration policies in Seychelles and others,” according to the head of Seychelles. We are currently migrating to a biometric passport.” Such a protected passport will be hard to forge. “On December 17, 2021, the Seychelles Ministry of Internal Affairs signed an e-passport deal with the French company Groupe Imprimerie Nationale, making the company’s competence in identifying and securing digital services available.
A standard passport is valid for ten years; however diplomatic passports and those granted to minors are only valid for five years. Those whose passports have not yet expired can keep them until they do, at which point they will be replaced with the new biometric passports.
Bhutan struggles to keep up with the demand
Meanwhile, passport applications have flooded Bhutan’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MFA), making it challenging for the administration to keep up with demand. Kuensel says that 1,000 passports had still to be picked up from the division after the first request on December 1 to exchange temporary travel documents for passports. With a population of over 700,000, this has caused long delays at passport offices, since just 200 passports were supposed to be granted each day and only 50 in-person appointments were booked. Tandi Dorji, Minister of Foreign Affairs, reacted on the issue, stating that just 10,000 passport booklets have lately been sent to the nation, compared to 60,000 booklets in the initial shipment in October.
Despite the challenges, the division has announced that it aims to address the backlog in 10 days once the next shipment arrives in the country next week. A total of 1,869 passports have been authorized for printing, with another 1,659 applications still processing. The passport debacle comes only weeks after Bhutan’s government reported that biometric data collection for the country’s national digital ID program was 77% complete.
