- Contract for the personalisation of diplomatic passports and service passports
- Contract for supplying biometric visa and consular registration cards
Brussels (Belgium) – Abidjan (Côte d’Ivoire), 12 January 2009 – Zetes, the leading pan-European supplier of solutions for the automated identification of goods and people, has announced the signing of two new contracts with the Côte d’Ivoire. The projects - which Zetes was awarded in the wake of its involvement with the personalisation project of regular biometric passports - relate to the personalisation of diplomatic passports and service passports and a contract for supply of biometric visas and consular registration cards.
In doing so, Zetes is again involved as a technology partner for SNEDAI (The National Company for the Issue of Administrative and Identity Documents), acting on behalf of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.
For the diplomatic passports and service passports the enrolment operations are set to take place with the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, whereas the personalisation of passports will take place at the centre put in place by Zetes and SNEDAI in Abidjan.
French company Imprimerie Nationale will provide the blank passports for personalisation.
The contract for the biometric visa and the consular registration cards (intended for Ivorian citizens residing abroad) involves the installation of registration stations in a total of 44 embassies across the globe. Zetes will be handling the installation of some twenty enrolment stations in 8 countries, including one at Abidjan airport. The remaining posts will be installed directly by SNEDAI.
The implementation of this project will be handled in collaboration with Hologram Industries. The latter company provides solutions for the authentication of identity documents which allows both types of documents to be duly protected with anti-counterfeit technology.
‘The solution delivered by Zetes for the roll out of the regular biometric passports proved to be highly satisfactory. It therefore made sense for us to call on the services of the same company again for the new projects aimed at producing travel documents,’ states Mr. Poby, SNEDAI director-general. ‘These documents will enable our citizens travelling abroad and persons travelling to Côte d’Ivoire alike, to hold identity documents that have been produced to incorporate the very latest state-of-the-art technology, making it easy to swiftly prove who they say they are.’
‘These new contracts attest to the smooth-paced running of the national passport project which was launched in 2007, and to the truly excellent collaboration with SNEDAI’, Zetes CEO Alain Wirtz goes on to add. ‘What is more, these projects enable us to lever up the infrastructures already in place and to raise their productivity. We are proud of the confidence placed in us and we are confident that our joint efforts will bring these projects to successful fruition.’
ENDS
