Amid growing complaints of difficulties by people needing new passports because of the government decision to stop all passport-related works for two months, the government appears unlikely to introduce the Machine Readable Passport (MRP) by the start of June, as it was expected earlier.
The Ministry of Foreign Affairs today said the date for introducing the MRPs has been "extended for three months". The MRPs will be introduced "within June 2010".
As per the directive of the International Civil Aviation Organisation (ICAO), the international governing body of civil aviation, Nepal government had to replace the old hand-written passports with MPRs from April 1, but it failed to meet the deadline owing to prolonged dispute over MRP printing contract.
In a controversial decision, the government recently awarded the MRP printing contract to the Indian government-owned Security Printing and Minting Corporation, without bidding process.
It will take at least two months for the Indian firm to deliver the first consignment of MRPs to Nepal government, it is learnt.
No comments:
Post a Comment