The department had cut passport distribution by two-thirds as stocks were running low.
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To address the problem of passport shortage, the Passport Department is set to purchase an additional 700,000 passports from its existing supplier. The department has signed an agreement with French company IDEMIA to purchase additional passports.
The department had cut passport distribution by two-thirds as the stock was running low. The department, district administration, area administration and foreign missions used to distribute 5-6,000 passports a day, but recently it has been reduced to less than 2,000. The department's Director General Tirtha Raj Aryal claimed that distribution would return to normal within a week. 'As per the new purchase agreement, supply will start within three weeks,' he said.
The department currently has a stock of 81,000 ordinary passports. The new passport supplier will replace the 55,000 passports that were found to be damaged among the previous supplies. After both, the department will have 136,000 passports. This will last for more than a month, said Director General Aryal. He informed that there will be no problem now as passport supply as per the new purchase agreement will start. Director General Aryal said that the department has reduced the distribution of passports and limited it to 1,000 per day, and the quota will be increased from Sunday.
The department had invited international bids on 13 Mangsir 2081 for the purchase of 6.4 million blank electronic passport booklets for a period of 5 years. Separate bids were invited for the passport system including passport pre-registration, data management and distribution as ‘Package 1’ and the passport booklet including personalization, quality control and packing as ‘Package 2’.
Two German companies have been selected for the supply of passports through the tender competition process. German company Muebbauer has been selected for ‘Package 1’ and German Veridos for ‘Package 2’. According to the purchase agreement signed in Shrawan last year, the newly selected company has stated that it will be able to supply passports only from the second week of Falgun.
Meanwhile, problems had started to appear as the passports in the department’s stock were decreasing. The department says that a transitional situation has arisen due to ‘handover’ and ‘takeover’ between the current supplier and the new supplier. The current supplier, IDEMIA, did not get the contract this time. However, to overcome the current shortage, the department has reached a situation where it has to purchase additional passports from them. Each passport was purchased from IDEMIA at a price of 10.13 US dollars. Director General Aryal said that an agreement has been reached to purchase an additional 700,000 at the same price.
