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Pak expats told to keep track of passport expiry

Speaking to Khaleej Times, Imran Mirza, the Head of Chancery at the Pakistan Consulate, said that, surprisingly, most people were aware of the expiry date of their visas, but they totally ignored the expiry date of the passports, which lead to problems while travelling.

“We have received many cases in which people call up from the airport and say that they are stranded because their passports have expired,” he said.

“We have been helpful in this regard and renewed the passports on an urgent basis, but this will not be possible anymore, as all expatriates are now required to have Machine Readable Passports (MRPs). “Computerised machines for this purpose have already been set up in the consulate premises and will be operational soon,” he added.

But before acquiring an MRP, all expatriates will be required to acquire National Identity Cards for Overseas Pakistanis (Nicops), which are already being issued at the consulate.

“All expatriates will have to bring the Nicops to the consulate after which they will be issued MRPs,” he said.

The Pakistan government has introduced MRPs incorporating special security features designed to check human trafficking and forgery that meet all basic requirements of International Civil Aviation Organisation.

The new passports contain digitally printed personal data with a photograph which cannot be tampered with.

Under the procedure of getting new passports, no application or photos are required from the applicants as they only have to bring their 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.

Also present is 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 over to machine-readable travelling documents and the first in the South Asian region to do so.

“With the new document, travellers would be processed through entry and exit points in comparatively less time,” said Mirza.

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