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Govt. to go ahead with controversial passport order
The government will proceed with the last administration’s controversial decision to procure an urgent stock of N-series machine-readable passports (MRPs) from a consortium of Thales DIS Finland Oy and its Sri Lankan agent, Just In Time (JIT) Technologies (Pvt) Ltd, to solve an unprecedented shortage of travel documents caused by a bungled tender.
“We are not stopping that order from Thales,” said Public Security Minister Vijitha Herath, who took over the portfolio from Tiran Alles. “If we stop, we won’t have passports. The process, whether right or wrong, will continue.”
Thales is due to supply the first stock of 47,500 passports between October 15 and 20, he said. A second shipment of 100,000 MRPs is expected at the end of November. The country’s inventory of blank passports is now at an all-time low. Thales has, however, still not provided samples of the new passport to Sri Lanka’s Department of Immigration and Emigration (DIE). These copies must be sent in advance to the International Civil Aviation Organisation (ICAO) for approval before any new passport can be accepted by border authorities worldwide.
The government will now buy the full stock of 750,000 passports from Thales, as sanctioned by the previous Cabinet. Letters of credit for US$ 3.7 million (Rs. 1 billion) had been opened for this purchase under former Immigration and Emigration Controller General Harsha Illukpitiya before he was remanded by the Supreme Court on contempt charges.
The pathway for the procurement was cleared only after the Court of Appeal on Tuesday issued a varied interim order allowing the Sri Lankan government and the Controller General to buy the N-series MRPs from “a suitable supplier as per the decision of the Government of Sri Lanka, to overcome the present crisis faced by the country.”
The Court’s original injunction dated September 26 had halted the purchase of both MRPs and ePassports. This was pending the consideration of a writ petition filed by Epic Lanka (Pvt) Ltd., the losing bidder in an allegedly mismanaged ePassport tender that also went to Thales/JIT. Epic’s executive chairman said they believed the bidding process related to the ePassport procurement “was compromised and/or tainted with mala fides and/or subverted to unduly favour and assist certain vendors and to the undue disadvantage of others.” It was shortcomings in the ePassport procurement that caused the prevailing crisis.
The petitioners also objected to the emergency order of 750,000 N-series passports, saying, inter alia, that Epic had offered a 64-page MRP for a lower price (US$ 0.092 per page) than Thales (US$ 0.104 per page) whose travel document had 48 pages. When the case was taken up on Tuesday, Additional Solicitor General (ASG) Sumathi Dharmawardhana submitted on behalf of the Immigration Controller General and the Attorney General that there was a severe passport shortage: just 13,080 blank ones at the time of the hearing. At a daily issuance rate of 1,000 passports, the DIE had stocks available for just 13 working days.
Epic Lanka’s “travel document personalisation system” (TDPS) is currently used by the DIE to enter holder details into the data page, regardless of the supplier from whom blank travel documents are obtained. Epic notified the Court that it could personalise each passport at a licence fee of around US$ 1.50.
The Immigration Controller General, through the Attorney General, responded that Epic Lanka’s proposal was not necessary for the procurement of new passports. It was admitted, however, that there was a requirement for “a changeover to remove two security features” installed by Epic and that the DIE was in agreement to make a payment for it.
The ASG suggested that the two parties discuss the relevant technicalities and related payments and reach a settlement. The Acting Immigration Controller General undertook to appoint a five-member committee to negotiate with Epic Lanka. Justices M.T. Mohammed Laffar and P. Kumararatnam therefore amended their interim order to reflect the compromise reached between the petitioners and the State.
The quoted price of Thales for each N-series passport is Euro 4.52, or around US$ 4.96 per travel document. The addition of US$ 1.50 per passport would raise the taxpayer cost per passport to an exorbitant US$ 6.47 (nearly Rs. 2,000).
The injunction against the purchase of five million e-passports remains in place until November 6. The respondents were ordered to file objections before the next hearing.
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