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Passport to the future
18/01/2004 21:56 - (SA)
Johan Rheeder, Die Burger
Cape Town - In an attempt to curb the flood of illegal immigration and passport fraud, several countries - including South Africa - plan to add biometric information disks to passports.
These information discs will contain psychological information and unique characteristics of the passport holder.
Britain and Australia have already indicated that they plan to use the discs.
Britain plans to incorporate this data in the form of a digital photo in the passport by 2005.
The photo will then be marked with the British passport service's signature to make forgery virtually impossible.
South Africa has similar plans for passport holders.
Department of home affairs spokesperson Nkosana Sibuyi confirmed that the government would be looking at introducing an information card in passports.
He said the cards would be similar to a driver's licence.
The card would contain personal information about the passport holder that will be difficult to forge, he added.
Sibuyi said illegal immigration and passport are some of the biggest problems they are facing.
According to Sibuyi home affairs would have to investigate the affordability of the cards.
At present, South Africa spends about R90m annually on repatriation of illegal immigrants to their homelands, especially Mozambique and Zimbabwe.
- Die Burger
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