RP's electronic passport

After a long delay, the Department of Foreign Affairs (DFA) has finally launched its electronic passport or “e-passport," with President Macapagal Arroyo as the first recipient. Mrs. Arroyo recently received the e-passport with code EA000001 at the DFA main office in Pasay City where launching ceremonies were held. As of now, Filipinos are either using manually scripted passports (green or brown) or machine-readable passports (MRP). In mid-2007, the DFA main office and the more than 40 Philippine embassies and consulates issued about 1.4 million machine-readable passports. The DFA said that the e-passport is more advanced than the machine-readable passport because it has a 64-kilobyte microchip where the security features and personal data of the holder are stored – a measure meant to combat fraud and tampering of the travel document. But the DFA said that machine-readable passports and manually scripted passports will remain valid until their expiration date. The department said it will be releasing an initial two to four million e-passports in two to three months time. Once released, the DFA said Filipinos can avail of these passports within three to four days for P950 each. - GMANews.TV