Malawi will spend $40 million less in the new five-year passport production deal with Indian firm Madras Security Printing System, Homeland Security Minister Ezekiel Ching’oma has claimed.
Ching’oma said this in Lilongwe when he visited Department of Immigration and Citizenship Services offices to observe how passport printing work is going.
According to Ching’oma, unlike the previous deal, which was for three years and cost the government $70 million, the new passport deal is for five years and will cost the government “only” $30 million.
He described the new passport deal as a breakthrough, saying delays in the printing of passports will soon be a thing of the past.
The minister said, in addition to being less costly, the new passport has enhanced security features, including a chip which contains the passport holder’s biodata, a thing which was not available in the previous passport.
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“This new passport is registered by the International Civil Aviation Organisation (Icao). This new passport has personalised data of the holder of the passport in a chip,” he said.
Ching’oma told reporters that printing the new passport under express terms would be taking a maximum of two days and that, under ordinary circumstances, it would be taking a maximum of 10 days.
He admitted that the Department of Immigration and Citizenship Services was sitting on a backlog of over 100,000 passports but assured Malawians that the backlog would be cleared within weeks as printing of the passports would be done both in Malawi and India.
“Gone are the days when Malawians used to wait for a long time to get a passport,” Ching’oma said.
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He added that unlike the old system, the new system would be owned by the Malawi Government.
“We took time to start printing the passports here. The reason is that, this time around, the system will be owned by the government. [In the case of] the old contract, the system was owned by the manufacturer, the supplier. So, it is an improvement.
“This time around, we will also introduce new centres, where we will be printing passports [in areas] such [as] Kasungu, Salima and Chikwawa as new centres where we will be printing passports,” Ching’oma said.
Yesterday, reporters were taken through the passport printing process, which saw the minister’s passport getting printed within two hours.
Madras Security Printing System has replaced E-Tech Systems.
The new system has a technical capacity to process over 1,000 passports daily under full operational efficiency.
For the past couple of months, some Malawians have been facing challenges when travelling as their passports were not readable.
This resulted in travellers being stranded in foreign countries for days, despite the Department of Immigration and Citizenship Services insisting that the Malawi passport was authentic and up to international standards.
