“This effect comes with expanding enrollment centers to the diaspora. Now you can apply for a biometric passport in the UK, USA, Spain and Italy.
“In addition to that there will be a mobile team also that will be going around to other countries to ensure that people can now apply and get their biometric.”
He added that the service is decentralized within the country.
“People within the country don't have to come to Banjul to get a biometric passport. We are going to open new enrollment centers in CRR Basse, in Lower River Region in Soma and in North Bank Region in Kerala.
He stated that the increment is inevitable, because the contract was signed under an agreement in 2013 and it is a 15-year contract from 2013 to 2029. “And the contract was signed by the former President Yahya Jammeh.”
“In this contract, there are clauses there which talk about the passport costs over time. In the contract in 2023, the prices should have gone up to D4,000 in line with the contract, but because government at that time understood that this was going to be expensive for many Gambians was subsidizing the price of the passports. And now based on the contract, in 2025 the price should go to 5,100,” he said.
“In the contract the machine readable passports should not have been printed but because government wanted to create a system whereby people could have options. The machine readables were allowed to be produced but now we'll let them phase out as we go.”
“The most important thing is that the biometric passports prices will increase to D5,100 in line with the contract. In fact government was subsidizing the price of the passports for the past years.”
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