Kathmandu, March 21: Nepal’s Department of Passports (DoP) is in the final stage of shifting from machine-readable passports to a fully electronic passport system, with rollout expected from mid-May.
Director General Tirtha Raj Aryal said the upgraded system, backed by new software and hardware, is ready for implementation. Speaking at a press meet at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs on Friday, he said installation work has been completed, and multiple testing phases are underway.
The factory acceptance test was completed two months ago, while user and site acceptance tests are ongoing. Under a new agreement, the department has already received 4,800 sample passports, and a further 500,000 are in the supply pipeline.
Since the introduction of electronic passports, the department has issued over 17.1 million passports in total. Of these, 5.5 million are e-passports. The rest were issued through the department, district administration offices and Nepal’s missions abroad.
In the first eight months of the current fiscal year up to mid-March, a total of 745,022 passports were issued. This includes 210,702 from the department, 384,070 from district offices and 150,250 from missions abroad.
The department currently holds a stock of 397,993 passports, including 375,725 standard-34 -page passports. This stock is expected to meet demand until mid-May.
Aryal said a short transition period will be required to fully switch systems, as running both in parallel is difficult due to technical and chip encoding constraints. The full transition is planned around mid-May once testing is complete.
People’s News Monitoring Service
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