Passport crisis brews further, Govt appoints committee to seek solution

The crisis involving the issuing of passports brews further with the available number of copies being sufficient only till July next year.

The situation has prompted the government to take steps to  appoint a special committee to make recommendations to resolve this issue before it snowballs into a social problem. 

An informed source told the Daily Mirror that the Cabinet has decided to appoint a committee to study the situation and work out recommendations to resolve it.

The committee is required to submit details to the government within two weeks. 

Currently, there is an ongoing legal case involving the tender deal during the time of the previous government. The source said the issue had to be addressed without any bearing on the legal case. 

The government  proceeded with the previous  administration’s decision and  procured an urgent stock of N-series machine-readable passports (MRPs) from a consortium of Thales DIS Finland Oy and its Sri Lankan agent, Just In Time (JIT) Technologies (Pvt) Ltd, to solve an unprecedented shortage of travel documents caused by a bungled tender process at that time.

It is learnt that only 600,000 copies are now available and the stock is sufficient till July next year, given the current level of demand.