The People’s Struggle Alliance held a special press conference in Nugegoda today to inform the public about the issue of foreign passports and the related public money fraud.
Pubudu Jayagoda, Colombo district candidate of People’s Struggle Alliance, who spoke there said:
“Recently, a problem has arisen in issuing passports in Sri Lanka. Normally, there is a demand for 2800 passports per day, but recently only 1000 passports were issued per day. The reason for this was the government’s decision to issue a new type of passport and the serious delay in the implementation of that decision.
MRP (Machine Reading Passport) issued so far. Instead, the government decided to issue an E Passport with a chip and more security features. To do that, a new PKI (Public Key Infrastructure) is needed. In the first EOI (Expression of Interest), it was said that the person applying for a new passport should also do the PKI. But the tender was approved without it.
Three companies were qualified to call for tenders. Among them, the company called peruri, which is related to epic Lanka, offered $9.85. Next, the company called metropoliton, which is related to the Malaysian company called Irish, had offered $6.37. Just in time, a company related to Thales in France, has offered $5.02. Now then according to this, it was decided to give the tender to the just in time company which had submitted the lowest amount.
In any case, epic Lanka is the company that has intervened in the issuance of passports in Sri Lanka for the past 21 years. That company went to court against this procurement process. This is the background story behind the e-passport story and the creation of a big passport queue.
Now the problem here is that the court case was not about an error in calling for tenders. Epic Lanka company had continuously said that they have the legal authority to issue passports in Sri Lanka. They said that if they buy passports from another company, they need to pay for it.
But the Immigration and Emigration Department opposed it. But in the end, the court said that if you pay, $1.45 should be paid for one passport and whether or not to pay that should be decided by a committee. Now a committee has been appointed but the committee has not yet made a recommendation.
Now epic Lanka is showing a letter that Sri Lanka has reached an agreement that they have the power to issue passports in Sri Lanka. But the Immigration Department says that they do not have such a letter. Now the question we have is whether the immigration department signed an agreement like epic Lanka company. It should be investigated immediately.
Just in time company is currently issuing seven and a half lakh passports. Epic Lanka has to pay $1.45 for each passport issued. Then there is about one million dollars in money. This is unnecessary and a huge waste of public money. The government should immediately tell the country its position in this regard.
Now the so-called epic Lanka company was the subject of the National Drug Regulatory Corporation’s data fraud earlier.
That’s why, as the People’s Struggle Alliance, we ask the government to immediately conduct a formal investigation related to this. Also, the government has no right to give a million dollars of public money to the company. So stop immediately.