PESHAWAR: Machine-readable passports to be issued from Sept
By Sadia Qasim Shah
PESHAWAR, June 10: The machine-readable passports (MRPs) will be issued from September the MRP offices being established in Islamabad and Peshawar, official sources said.
Under the MRP project launched by the interior ministry, about 29 offices will be established in major cities around the country in a period of about five years.
The manual passports, which have already been issued by the passport offices, would be valid for the next five years and after that machine readable passports would be issued to all the applicants.
The purchase of land and construction of buildings would cost about Rs13 million under the MRP project whereas the National Database Registration Authority (Nadra) would install the machinery and recruit the staff in the passport offices.
"The United States is said to have provided financial assistance to interior ministry in this project," the official sources at the passport office revealed. However, officials at the Islamabad passport office, denying that the US was funding the project, said that it was a project funded by the government.
The machine readable passport offices and Nadra would be linked by this project as the computerised national identity cards (CNICs) and passports from these MRP offices would help crosscheck data and help in the verification of data.
There was no such building before but construction work on the first buildings of the MRP offices at Islamabad and Peshawar would be completed by the end of this month, the sources said. In the NWFP, the MRP offices would also be established at Kohat, Bannu, D.I. Khan, Mardan and Swat.
After the establishment of passport office building, Nadra would install the machinery in the month of July and the MRP offices would become functional in September, an official at the passport office said.
When the Nadra's main office was contacted about MRP project for further information, project manager Shayan Kamal and another concerned official, Rashid Ahmed, were reluctant to give any information about the MRP project.
Earlier, the manual passports were hand written and it was very difficult to manage and locate the data. Under the MRP project a computerised database would be developed. It would be easy to locate data and check tempering in the passports as the passports would be computerised.
"There is a possibility that a manual passport may be bogus but due to linkage with Nadra data could be easily verified," said an official at the Peshawar passport office.
Another official said the normal passport fee for manual passport was Rs1,500 and for urgent manual passport Rs4,000 but there was a possibility that the fee of computerised passports would increase. The process of issuance of computerised passport may also be time taking and complicated, an official said.
