Peru’s new passport
full of problems
Alvaro Tassano
According a report, the new biometric passports have shown issues due to
errors in the software, printing, the safety film, the fingerprint, and others.
On July 8, hundreds of
residents flocked the Migration office in the district of Breña to collect
their new biometric passports. However, due to the lack in
coordination in the appointments and the amount of technical flaws in the
system, chaos and confusion ensued.
Now, a new report presented
by the news channel Panorama exposes more problems.
According to the report,
the new biometric passports have shown to have a number of issues due
to errors in the software, printing, on the safety film, on the chip, the
fingerprint, among others.
The errors found occurred
after the Peruvian government paid the French company Gemalto – Imprimerie S/
102 million soles to put together the software.
The first problem surfaced
after authoriets did not follow the deadlines described in the contract, by not
conducting a test run with only a few passports (to identify
errors before it is available to the entire population).
Humala's administration
sped the process to make the passports available 20 days before the end of this
government, and not the end of August as it was first scheduled. According to
Panorama, the change was made by the express request of former superintendent
Boris Potozen, who was close to the previous administration.
“This would explain why the computer
system crashed. Between July 8 and July 31, 50% of (the system) collapsed,”
revealed the Migration superintendent, Eduardo Sevilla, before Congress.
In August, the percentage
of systems errors experienced with the biometric passports was
68% and 73% in September.
Furthermore, according to
the report, a Lithuanian software, one of the cheapest in the world, with
Chinese-made machines was implemented. The contract also, 400,000 passports per
year will arrive from France; however, twice as many are required to meet the
demand.
Congressman Victor Andres
Garcia Belaunde warned Panorama that these problems with this type of document,
could cause problemsfor Peruvians traveling abroad.
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