Issuing of biometric passports in BiH should start from October 15, this year, has been said yesterday in Sarajevo by Siniša Macan, director of the Identification Documents, Data Exchange and Evidence Agency. He believes that the previous practice of seven days waiting on passport will be continued. The legal deadline for issuing the passport is 30 days in BiH and 60 days in diplomatic-consular representations.
For this year, 270.000 booklets have been ordered from printing house in Germany and Macan believes that this amount of passports will be sufficient. Old passports, he has explained, will be valid until its expiration, but traveling to the Schengen countries will only be possible with biometric passports.
By beginning of issuing the biometric passports BiH will fulfill one of the rest 40 conditions from the Path map for abolishing the visa regime. Macan has reminded on four obligations, which have been left, in order to improve the system of issuing the personal documents.
“First obligation is introducing the biometric passports. Second one relates to anti-corruption measures in the system of issuing the personal documents, which is a key condition. Majority of institutions have already adopted the anti-corruption programs, however, those must be implemented as well. The third one is to undertake the measures of notifying on lost and stolen travel documents, and that has practically been realized. The time period has been shortened, so the lost or stolen travel document can be notified in the same day as a non-valid in the Interpol database. At the end, there is delivery of data from master offices, on which the work has already been started”, Macan has said.
Price – 40 KM
Biometric passport will cost 40 KM. This price finances the work of 162 institutions, which issue the passports, servants, central system, and network for data transfer. Citizens, who because of the illness or death case need immediately issuing of passport, will be able to get it by the same price. All others, who are in hurry, will have to pay 200 KM.
At the press conference the IDDEEA director has also talked about the constitutional and legal authorization in issuing of documents. He has said that 142 municipalities (master offices), ten cantonal ministries of internal affairs and two entity ministries of internal affairs (135 locations for issuing of documents), one institution of the Brčko District, two entity ministries, two state ministries (45 locations in DKP network) and one state agency participate in so called identity chain. This chain also consists of 162 institutions at 322 locations for issuing of documents.
In difference from BiH, in Serbia and Montenegro, for which the European Commission has recommended abolishment of visas, only one institution deals with issuing of documents. Macan has said that he does not see a problem in that, because BiH is a de-centralized state and our system of issuing of personal documents he has compared with the one in Germany, Spain and Belgium.
“The Identification Documents, Data Exchange and Evidence Agency of BiH, nor former Directorate for CIPS project implementation has issued documents, nor it has its organizational units in any municipality of BiH”, Macan has said, by removing the burden of constant complaints of citizens from the agency. He has reminded that the confirmations on citizenship and birth certificates are being issued by the local administration authorities, while identification cards and passports by the ministries of internal affairs.