- New advanced passport scanners cause delays - New scanners acquired at a cost Rs. 18 m - Reverting to old machines temporary solution ----- The Department of Immigration and Emigration is in the process of reverting to its original passport scanners at the Bandaranaike International Airport (BIA) only four months after acquiring 60 new machines at a cost of Rs. 18 million. The replacement has been necessitated by the delays experienced after the installation of the new and advanced scanners, leading to many complaints by passengers over the past few months. The new passport scanners were purchased at Rs. 3 lakhs each and were installed at the immigration counters to bring the complains of delays at counters under control. However, this had had the opposite effect, resulting in three to four-second delays per passenger. Upon the re-installation of the old machines, the Department of Immigration and Emigration hopes to cut down the per passenger delay to two seconds, results of which are expected to be observed this week. However, this would be a temporary measure. According to the sources, at the moment, the BIA utilises high level hardware equipment similar to that of Dubai and Singapore but the sources said that the adoption of their software is a costly task which the Department of Immigration and Emigration is not considering doing anytime soon.