The Immigration and Emigration Department has planned to accept applications to issue passports online starting in January next year, the department’s IT controller Champika Ramawickrama said.

Through the program, an applicant will be able to submit his/her application to the department from the comfort of his home.

He went on to say that the applicant only needs to come to the department to attend to biometric formalities, such as finger prints.

For that, the department has decided to establish 50 front offices counters in each district to obtain fingerprints, Ramawickrama said.

He stated that 50 Divisional Secretariat Offices were chosen from each district for this purpose.