‘Issuance of e-passports to become mandatory from 2027’

As many as 6.5 million passports have been issued in the current year to Pakistanis who intend to travel abroad.

This was stated by Director-General Passports Pakistan Mustafa Jamal Qazi, while talking to officials during his visit to the Karachi Passport Office on Thursday.

He told the officials that issuance of e-passports would become mandatory from the year 2027. He said that all necessary arrangements were being finalised in this regard.

Qazi said the process was underway to switch from the current system of machine-readable passports to e-passports. He said that a new system would be installed in this regard in the next six to seven months, and afterwards the service of e-passports would become mandatory from 2027.

He said a top-level task force had been probing into the issue of 12,000 Pakistani passports allegedly issued to Afghan nationals.

Qazi claimed that the issue of delay in the issuance of Pakistani passports had been resolved. He said the government had procured a sufficient quantity of the lamination paper required for the printing of new passports. Afterwards, the issuance of passports will become normalised in the country.