More member states using new CARICOM passport
Guyana to join ranks in July - Sources
Kaieteur News
January 27, 2007
The Caribbean Community (CARICOM) Secretariat announced yesterday that on Monday, Grenada will become the eighth member state to introduce the unique CARICOM passport.
The introduction by Grenada means that more than half of the 15-member Caribbean Community would have introduced the CARICOM passport to nationals, the Secretariat stated.
On Thursday, Trinidad and Tobago became the seventh Member State and the second country since 2007 to have introduced its CARICOM passport. Saint Lucia joined the unique club on January 16.
Sources indicated yesterday that by June, Guyana will begin issuing machine-readable CARICOM passports, but equipment to enable the reading of the machine-readable passports will be installed at all major ports of entry by the end of February.
The new Guyana passport is expected to feature a new attractive design featuring Guyana 's flora and fauna, highly secure with tamper resistant intaglio and lithographic security printing.
The size of the passport and photograph, and arrangement of data fields, especially the two lines of printed Optical, Character Reader Style B (OCR-B) machine-readable data, meet the standards of the International Civil Aviation Organization, Doc 9303, Part 1 Machine Readable Passports.
Government and Canadian Bank Note (CBN) signed a contract for the production of 300,000 machine readable passports on December 8 last, at the Ministry of Home Affairs. The cost of the contract is US$3.2 million.
CBN is a Canadian company and has supplied secure passport issuing systems to Dominica , Grenada , Jamaica , St. Vincent , Suriname , St. Kitts and Nevis , and St. Lucia and has delivered more than 50 secure identification systems to Governments around the world.
Suriname was the first to issue the new CARICOM passport, followed by St Vincent and the Grenadines , St Kitts and Nevis and Dominica . These countries issued the new passports in 2005, while Antigua and Barbuda issued the new passport in 2006.
All other member states are expected to introduce the CARICOM passport by the end of December.
Those states that have not yet done so are attempting to deplete their existing stock, before issuing the new CARICOM passport.