KATHMANDU: The government is issuing e-passports from today. According to the Passport Department, preparations for issuing e-passport, which has been under discussion for a long time, have reached the final stage.
Sharad Raj Arun, Director of the Department, said that the Department is going to issue passports by organizing a program on November 17.
Nepal has been issuing ‘Machine Readable Passport’ (MRP) till now. The Department has stated that it is going to issue e-passport to make the passport more systematic and safe. He added that limited passports would be issued in the early days.
Even though e-passport has been issued since September 17, it will be fully operational within a week, he said.
According to him, the Department was initially preparing to distribute both types of passports to move the MRP data to a new system and to make the printing work more effective.
Currently, various developed countries of the world have been issuing e-passports. The department has stated that electronic passports are of better quality and more reliable than MRP. E-passports use electronic chips like mobile SIMs, in which biometric data including passport holder personal details are stored.