Pakistan ends machine-readable passports in switch to e-passports
Three national outlets report the change, but none gives fees, validity periods or the fate of booklets already issued.
Pakistan has stopped issuing machine-readable passports and switched to electronic passports, according to three national outlets that reported the change, with The Nation saying the machine-readable system was discontinued from October 23.
Geo News reported that Pakistan had replaced machine-readable passports with e-passports. The News International described the same move, saying the country had switched to e-passports and ended the machine-readable system. The three reports agree on the substance: the older booklet is no longer being issued, and applicants will now receive the electronic document.
The reports as published carried no statement from the Directorate General of Immigration and Passports or from the interior ministry, and none named the authority that ordered the change. They gave no fee schedule, no processing time and no validity period for the new passports.
They also did not say what happens to machine-readable passports already held by Pakistanis at home and abroad, whether those remain valid until their expiry date, or whether holders will be asked to replace them early. Nor did they say whether passport offices in Pakistan and the country's missions overseas have been given a transition period to clear applications already in the pipeline.
Those gaps matter to anyone with travel plans: people applying for a passport ahead of Umrah or Hajj, workers with Gulf employment visas to stamp, students holding admission deadlines, and families who booked tickets expecting the machine-readable booklet to be issued in the usual time.
An e-passport stores the holder's biometric data on a chip embedded in the booklet. The Nation was the only one of the three to date the change, putting it at October 23; Geo News and The News International reported the switch without giving a date for the changeover.
It is also unclear from the reports whether the change applies to all categories of passports, including the official and diplomatic series, or only to ordinary travel documents.
Skardu Times could not independently confirm the terms of the change from the immigration and passports directorate or the interior ministry.
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