By Our Reporter As the process of purchasing security printing press remained stuck at the parliamentarian committees, the government is likely to face a dearth of machine readable passports (MRPs) in the near future. According to the Foreign Ministry Officials, only 630,000 passports are left the passport department, and they will be enough only to meet the demands of six months. After the Ministry of Communication and Information Technology (MoCIT) decided to purchase security printing press through government-to-government process, the Department of Passports (DoP) under the Ministry of Foreign Affairs had stopped all its processes initiated to print and supply the passports from the earlier contractor Oberthur Technologies, a French digital security company. The DoP is still issuing passports printed by the French Company, but the passports are going to finish soon. The company had printed seven million copies of passports and had given it to the Nepal government on different dates. The Japanese government had already announced that it would be accepting nearly 350,000 workers from nine countries, including Nepal while Malaysia would be taking around 100,000 workers in the next five years. A few months ago, when the United States of America opened E-DV and made passport number compulsory while filling up the forms, the demand of passports went up dramatically than the normal demand. During E-DV time of 2019, the department issued 4,300 passports a day. At other times, the department issues 2,500 passports in average a day. The department had distributed 517,000 passports last year. Similarly, the passports, which were issued in 2010 and 2011 will also be going to expire in 2021, this will create additional burden on the department in managing their renewal and the pressure of the fresh applicants. The Department of Passports had to cancel the e-bidding process on November 7, 2019, after the Cabinet decision stopped them doing so while it was calling e-biding notice for the printing, supply, delivery, installation, testing, and commissioning of equipment.