• Home

MRP launched in Pak mission

DUBAI - The Pakistani mission in Dubai on Wednesday officially launched the Machine Readable Passports (MRPs) in the UAE. The Pakistan Ambassador to the UAE Air Marshal (retd) Syed Qaiser Hussain inaugurated the soft launch at the Consulate-General of Pakistan.

A technical team from Nadra in Pakistan was also present to evaluate the status of the MRPs before the official launch. The machinery required for the procedure had been set up earlier this year.

Speaking on the occasion, the ambassador said it was a big achievement for the country to have successfully launched MRPs in missions abroad. "We are among the few missions abroad to have launched the MRPs," he added.

The ambassador said people could change their valid manual passports into MRPs by paying the passport fee. The technical officers present informed that the MRPs would, in future, be upgraded by including readable chips that could be scanned at international airports without having to queue.

The Pakistan government introduced MRPs incorporating special security features designed to check human trafficking and forgery that fill all basic requirements of International Civil Aviation Organisation (ICAO). The new passports contain digitally printed personal data with a photograph which cannot be tampered with.

Under the procedures for new passports, no application forms or photos are required from the applicants as they only have to bring their National Identity Cards for Overseas Pakistanis (Nicops) with a photocopy and a bank receipt after depositing the prescribed passport fee. All data is entered into the system and the photograph is made digitally. An immigration official also conducts a brief interview to check that the applicant is a Pakistani national.

The new passports contain two machine-readable pages containing all the basic personal information. It also has a special 'bar code' as the biometric identifier of the MRP holder. According to statistics, Pakistan is among the 80 countries in the world to have moved towards machine-readable travel documents and the first in South Asian region to do so.