Pakistan Ambassador of Pakistan Ikramullah Mehsud said the Government of Pakistan working on this initiative and the embassies would be able to process the e-Passport applications.
Ambassador Mehsud also unveiled the e-Passport facility at Pakistan embassy in Manama enabling over 70,000 Pakistan community living in Bahrain to get e-Passports known as Machine Readable Passport (MRP) from the Embassy located in Diplomatic Area.
“This is a major achievement for the embassy to finally get the MRPs processed from June 20 for the public,” the Ambassador of Pakistan Ikramullah Mehsud, following the official opening of the e-Passport section at the embassy said.
The Ambassador, who himself spearheaded the project and made available the entire network for this service, hoped that the community would be able to get their MRPs according their convenience.
“We are expecting a rush during first two to three months and as the backlog of MRP applications finishes, things become back to normal,” Ambassador Mehsud said, who had been reassigned by the Government of Pakistan to Bahrain during the recent crisis.
Talking about the importance of the MRPs he said that the business community in specific and public in general need to get their passports with necessary biometrics data fed in the system to avoid any hassle at the airports and other entry points in the GCC and other parts of the world.
Pakistan Community lauded the efforts of the embassy to get MRP facility in Bahrain as many businessmen and frequent travelers did face cancellations of their visits as most of the GCC immigrations don’t accept handwritten passports anymore.
He also announced to launch a major awareness campaign by displaying posters in the Pakistani banks and social clubs about the basic requirements for the MRP applications.
The Deputy Head of Mission, Aurangzeb urged the community to get appointments from June 20th at the dedicated counter established at the embassy to avoid any inconvenience.
“Initially, we have the capacity of processing 60 applications a day and it is very important for the people to get prior appointments to keep the system smooth,” Aurangzeb said.
“There plans to issue the Machine Readable Visa (MRV) by the embassy. This facility will be in line with the efforts to feed the relevant data in the sticker readable by the machines at any entry point across the world,” he added.
In May Pakistan’s Interior Minister Rahman Malik had issued instructions to the concerned authorities in Islamabad to make necessary arrangements for issuing the Machine Readable Passports (MRPs).
The Minister issued instructions to the Director General Passports to depute technical staff at the Pakistan Mission in Manama with immediate effect.
The Ambassador informed the Minister that the project couldn’t kicked off for non availability of the technical personnel hence causing inordinate delay in the issuance of the MRPs at the Pakistan Mission in Manama.
It has been one of the major priorities of the Government back home in Islamabad to digitize the issuance of passports, ID cards and other relevant documents under the umbrella of NADRA.