Taskforce to manage manual passports

KATHMANDU, Feb 22: Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MoFA) has formed a 10-member Task Force comprising representatives from home ministry, the MoFA and Central Passport Office under the MoFA to make recommendations on what to do with over 400,000 manual passports that have become useless following the introduction of Machine Readable Passports (MRPs).



A meeting of the Task Force held on Sunday at MoFA decided to ask both home ministry and Nepali diplomatic missions abroad to prepare an updated record of the unused manual passports lying with them. "We have already sent a letter to all our diplomatic missions abroad and to the home ministry to this effect," said a source at the MoFA. [break]



The MoFA has also sent a sample format to be adopted in maintaining the record of manual passports which are to be sent back to the ministry to avoid possible misuse.



The Task Force is also entrusted to make recommendations on how many passport booklets to be retained and how many to be destroyed.

"We will have to keep some passport booklets as they can be used as travel documents in case somebody loses passport while in foreign land," the source said.



Earlier, home ministry had written to the MoFA seeking directives on what to do with the manual passports amidst the concerns of possible misuse. The home ministry had written to the foreign ministry seeking clear instructions whether to destroy them or send them back to the MoFA.



"We will have to destroy all passport booklets except those kept for temporary use," the source further said.



Over 400,000 manual passport booklets have become useless as the country started issuing MRPs from December 26, 2010, as per the deadline given by International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO). The MoFA withdrew the authority given earlier to the DAOs under home ministry and started issuing passports from its office in Narayanhiti from April 1, 2010 -- the original deadline given by the ICAO to issue MRPs.



There have been concerns from various quarters that manual passport booklets, especially those still lying at the District Administration Offices (DAOs), are at the extreme risk of being misused by fraudsters who could issue them with a backdate.



Home ministry officials said they have some 250,000 manual passports at its office and at the State Hall at the Office of the Prime Minister and Council of Ministers.

Likewise, some 45,000 passports are lying with various DAOs across the country. MoFA too has some 117,000 manual passport booklets and few more thousands are with various diplomatic missions abroad.



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