With the government raising the fee for passports that include a computer chip from NT$1,200 to NT$1,600 on Friday, many people have rushed to apply for or renew their passport before the end of the year.
Sources said the Bureau of Consular Affairs (BOCA) and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs’ offices in central, southern and eastern Taiwan had been hit by an extra workload, with the number of applications reaching more than 10,000 per day.
Sources also said that the ministry had activated “a secret weapon” — a visual image verification system — in the hope of preventing human traffickers from taking advantage of the busy period to obtain passports for Taiwanese or foreign nationals. The image verification system can be used to compare the photos of applications with images on the applicants’ ID cards and with images of fugitives, sources said.
Some 10.5 million Republic of China passports, including the old version without a computer chip, are in use at home and abroad. The number of passports issued between January this year and the end of this month is expected to reach 980,000, more than the 890,000 passports issued last year, sources said.
BOCA statistics also showed that about 514,000 passports with an embedded computer chip had been issued as of the end of July, while 860,000 had been issued as of the middle of this month.
On Friday, those applying for a passport will be required to pay NT$1,600 or US$50, but applicants younger than 14 or men above the age of 14 who have not completed their compulsory military service only pay NT$1,200 because their passports expire sooner than regular passports.
A regular passport is renewed every 10 years, while passports for children under 14 expire after five years and those for men who have not completed their military service expire after three years.
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