First of all, no panic. If you are planning to get a foreign passport but are afraid of constant upheavals, we assure you: feel free to apply for the document - it will be valid for all ten years allotted to it by law. There is no need to wait for innovations, because there will be none. Rumors do indeed spread. And there is no smoke without fire. The Cabinet of Ministers adopted a decision to create a Unified State Automated Passport System - changing the procedure for issuing passports and introducing a new model of the document. This system has been operating in the capital for more than a year, and for now only there.
In accordance with the resolution, six centers for issuing new-style passports have been established in Kyiv. The new passport looks different: instead of the usual glued-in photo, there is a digital one printed together with the passport form. The documents are produced centrally at the State Center for the Production of Passport Documents of the Unified State Automated Passport System, with reproduction of the photo reflection and the applicant's own signature.
Sergey Radutny claims that the new passport models have many levels of protection and are impossible to forge - this was exactly the goal that specialists pursued when developing the document. If earlier it was enough to verify one's identity with just an ordinary passport, now you need to bring along the original birth certificate and identification code. The latter will be directly placed in your future foreign passport as the personal number of the bearer. In addition, from now on the first page will have a holographic security element.
The innovation certainly has positives: a person who wants to get a foreign passport urgently comes to the center, fills out a form, is photographed on the spot, and the data is instantly sent to the database. Then the finished passport comes off the assembly line at the printing plant 'Ukraine'. Now you have a beautiful new passport made to all European standards. At the same time, its cost has not increased (85 hryvnias) and time is saved.
Nevertheless, there are also inconveniences: if earlier someone else could process a passport for you by power of attorney, now you must be present yourself when processing the document. Another problem is the not very fast pace of implementing the innovation. It is planned that by 2005 such passport centers will be located throughout Ukraine. However, even Kyiv is not properly equipped at present. True, six more such points will soon be opened in the capital, and Kyiv residents will be able to get a passport in their district.
Meanwhile, the passport hype continues. Residents of other regions come to Kyiv to get a new-style passport: they pour ink on their old documents, fearing they won't make it in time and their old passport will go out of use. Sergey Radutny assures that this should not be done. Passports of the old and new models will be used in parallel.
Regarding the rumors. There will be no third version of the foreign passport: no fingerprints will be taken from you - our state budget cannot afford this know-how. Today the country must fulfill a 'minimum program' - to provide its population with ordinary foreign passport forms.
In the Ukrainian media, publications have recently often appeared that the police artificially create a shortage of forms in order to then sell them for a significantly larger amount. Sergey Radutny comments on this problem as follows: "Every year Ukraine needs about a million passport forms - that is 15 million hryvnias. Their customer is the Ministry of Internal Affairs, and the money for this goes to the printing plant 'Ukraine', which prints passports at the expense of the state budget. Last year, a whole 5 million was received. And this despite the debt to the plant of 18 million." On the other hand, people pay the state considerable money for each foreign passport - 85 hryvnias, but the problem is that all funds settle in local budgets.