The enrolment kit will be used to capture biometric data for any new e-passport issuance.

The launch of the new enrolment kit means that Fiji’s Consulate General and Trade Commission Office will now be able to start accepting and processing e-passport applications from the 100,000 Fijians living in Australia, 60,000 of which reside in New South Wales alone.

At the launch, Permanent Secretary for the Office of the Prime Minister and Immigration Mr. Yogesh Karan said the e-passports were designed to increase security, making it more difficult to change data recorded in the new e-passport and therefore, limiting the chance of fraud.

He added that the e-passport has security features to prevent the unauthorised reading or ‘skimming’ of data stored on the e-passport chip.

The launch was attended by community and business leaders, officials from the Department of Immigration as well as Fiji’s High Commissioner to Australia, H. E. Luke Daunivalu.

Meanwhile, the Department of Immigration as part of its e-passport project, has also successfully launched e-passport enrolment kits at the Fiji High Commission in Wellington and London.

The second phase of the project will see the department setting up enrolment kits at our Diplomatic Missions in Washington DC, Brussels, Abu Dhabi and Tokyo.