- Mulls emergency Cabinet decision if required & in accordance with court orders
The Ministry of Public Security stated that a swift solution would be provided to the problem of issuing passports, while at present, it is not possible to obtain new passports due to a court order related to the same, and also to return to the previous supplier of passports due to a decision made by the previous Cabinet of Ministers.
Speaking to the media yesterday (1), Minister of Public Security Vijitha Herath, under whose purview the Department of Immigration and Emigration comes, said that the former Government had planned to introduce an electronic passport system, awarding the relevant contract to a new company in an unsolicited manner. However, he said that the relevant company had failed to deliver the order in the agreed timeframe, which resulted in the Department being left with only around 50,000 passports in stock.
“As a solution to this issue, the previous Government had placed an order for 75,000 normal passports with the same company (the company which was selected to purchase e-passports from). That company had however stated that they could provide only around 45,000 normal passports by 15-16 of this month. This order has been given to them without following any tender process, and under the tender called for e-passport purchasing. As a result, the relevant court has suspended this order considering a case filed by the company which previously supplied passports,” he said.
Even if the ordered 75,000 passports were to arrive in the country by 15-16 October, Minister Herath said that it would not be possible to resolve the issue as the relevant printing work could only be done by the company which supplied passports previously. “It is such a problematic situation which has arisen. It is not possible to purchase passports from the previous company as the Cabinet approval had been granted for another company to supply passports. It is also not possible to purchase passports from that company as there is a court order,” he went on to say.
Speaking further, he said: “President Anura Kumara Dissanayake, the relevant officials from the Immigration and Emigration Department and the Attorney General's (AG) Department, and I, as the subject Minister, had several rounds of discussions regarding this issue. The AG's Department is making the necessary interventions in the relevant court cases. We are hoping to provide a solution to this issue as soon as possible. The previous Government has made this more complex. We will however work in accordance with the court orders and solve this and we are even ready to make an emergency Cabinet decision to do it.”