St Vincent rolls out e-passport

St Vincent and the Grenadines has launched its e-passport, saying the document is even more secure than the machine-readable passport launched in 2005.

"The e-passport has a lot of enhanced security features - tamper-proof, with a chip embedded in the page, storing data - and in these ways and others, we are keeping ahead of the criminal elements who want to abuse our passports," Prime Minister Ralph Gonsalves said at the launch on Tuesday.

Gonsalves, who, as minister of nationalsecurity, is responsible for immigration matters, said that when the island introduced machine-readable passport in 2005 it was 10 years ahead of internationally agreed deadline.

"And now, we are going beyond the machine-readable passport to go and tighten the security further," he said, noting that St Vincent was the second CARICOM country after St Kitts-Nevis to introduce an e-passport.

The e-passport designed by St Vincent conforms with the International Civil Aviation Organisation's security resolution 1624 of 2005, which, Gonsalves said, sought to enhance the security of the country's travel documents.

Proud of achievement

"We, as citizens of this country, we should be very proud of this achievement. We have the additional assurance that we have a very secure travel document online with the highest international standard established by the International Civil Aviation Organisation. That's what we are doing here today. That's what we did in 2005 and we are lifting the game even higher," the PM said.

The e-passport cost EC$150 for persons to acquire. The government said that it had a three-year US$3.4-million contract with Canadian Bank Note to produce the e-passport.

- CMC