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WM correspondent
The manual passport, to be issued beginning from April 1, will no longer be valid for the international immigration.
Unfortunately, the government has till now not decided anything concrete to fulfill this obligation, set by International Civil Aviation Organisation (ICAO).
If the country misses the deadline, Nepali migrant workers, apart from others, will suffer heavily. Every day some 600 Nepalis leave the country for foreign employment.
Undeniably, the country\'s shaky economy, which is keeping itself afloat owing to remittances, will also receive a major blow with obstructions in the departure of Nepali migrant workers.
The inflow of remittances has been very important to sustain the disproportional rise in imports and widening balance of payment of the country.
The Ministry of Foreign Affairs has already cancelled the bidding process for printing machine readable passport (MRP) in an abrupt manner.
And, the seemingly shady proposal forwarded by Minster of Foreign Affairs Sujata Koirala to award the contract of printing MRP to Indian government owned agency invited flak even due to security reasons.
The Public Accounts Committee (PAC) directed the government to revive the cancelled bidding process instead of awarding the contract to the Indian agency that offered US $ 4 for printing each passport.
The four companies that were initially short-listed during the bidding process for printing the MRP include Gemulto Oy (Finland), Sagem Securities (Fance), 3m Technologies (Singapore) and Aberthur Technology (France).
Strangely, minister Koirala has grumbled that she would not comply with the order of the PAC to revive the bidding process.
She ambiguously argued," Nepal must fulfill its political commitment to the southern neighbour".
Koirala seems so hysterically eager to please the southern neighbour through the contract of MRP that she had totally failed to justify her decision to nullify the due bidding process.
On the other hand, a Malaysian company has forwarded a proposal to print one passport at US $ 3.75 and an Indonesian company has offered US $ 3.50 for the same.
But, the foreign ministry has not held any discussion regarding these relatively inexpensive offers.
The cabinet has decided to allow the foreign ministry to hold any bilateral and multilateral discussion regarding the MRP as the time is running out to meet the April 1 deadline.
The PAC decision is however clear that the contract should not be awarded to India.
The foreign ministry is now in a fix over whether it should comply with the PAC or the cabinet.
There should be no iota of doubt that lack of proper planning on the part of foreign ministry has triggered the unwarranted MRP row.
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