The Hon. Ananda Wijepala - Minister of Public Security and Parliamentary Affairs

¶ 01 Hon. Deputy Speaker, the Hon. Leader of the Opposition’s question under Standing Order 27(2) is urgent and of national importance. We decided to respond today itself. This is a serious, crisis-ridden issue inherited from the previous Government. We have already mitigated it to some extent. Responses to question 01 are as follows:

¶ 02 01. One-day service: - Through the online system, an appointment can be booked; upon appearing on the appointment date, a passport can be obtained the same day. - For example, if you book today, the earliest available date is 27 June — roughly five months ahead via the online system. - However, for genuine urgency before the booked date, any applicant can appear before the Department’s internal committee, establish urgency, and obtain a passport the same day.

¶ 03 Ordinary service: - For ordinary service via online appointment, once you submit the application at the Department, a passport can be obtained in about one month from that date.

¶ 04 Daily volumes: - For online appointment holders, about 800 same-day passports are issued per day. - In addition to urgent committee-approved cases, about 600 passports are issued daily. - About 500 passports are issued daily at the request of foreign missions. - For pilgrimages (e.g., Dambadiva; upcoming Hajj), around 250 passports daily. - For online application batches, around 250 daily. - From our four branch offices, around 200 daily via the online system. - Under ordinary service, about 250 daily. - Though daily issuance was capped at 2,500, urgent needs cause fluctuations; currently around 2,900 passports are issued daily.

¶ 05 Reasons impeding normalization: - The previous Government failed to place adequate orders, and a legal challenge (C.A. Writ 609/2024) by a bidder not selected in the tender for passport booklets has hindered normalization.

¶ 06 When normalization is expected: - Though we have been in office only two months, we have taken three steps: 1. With the Attorney General’s Department we are expediting court proceedings to conclude the pending case swiftly. 2. The Cabinet has appointed an Independent Expert Committee led by Professors of the University of Moratuwa, Department of Computer Science and Engineering, to study and recommend actions within 14 days. The Committee report is expected today at the Ministry and will go to Cabinet on Monday for decisions. 3. We have initiated an emergency procurement to purchase five million passport booklets. We expect to publish notices this week and call for bids to acquire these. We believe the situation can be normalized after August 2025.

¶ 07 02. From January 2024 to date, approximately 586,935 applications have been received. During the same period, about 587,094 passports have been issued — more than the applications received this year because we also cleared a portion of the late-2023 backlog.

¶ 08 03. Pending issuance stands at roughly 125,000 passports. Current issuance is managed to avoid exhausting stocks before replenishment. Ideally, to clear the backlog we should issue 3,500 per day; while capped at 2,500, on some days we issue up to 2,900 due to urgencies. Issuance is being managed carefully.

¶ 09 04. The current supplier is Thales DIS Finland Oy, supplying “P-series” passports to the Department of Immigration and Emigration under a tender. This tender was conducted under the previous Government and was placed before their Cabinet. As legal proceedings are ongoing, we can table documents in Parliament subject to the Attorney General’s clearance to avoid prejudicing the case. The Government is, at present, satisfied with the supplier’s deliveries; under a prior Cabinet decision, the supplier is delivering monthly lots of 100,000–150,000 booklets under agreement. Separately, as stated above, we are initiating a new procurement to identify an additional supplier.

¶ 10 05. Currently issued e-passports conform to ICAO international standards. While there is no need to change ICAO-related quality specifications, some interior page images and colours were proposed to be changed; however, as orders have already been placed and contracts executed, such design changes cannot be made now.