Passport issuance at Sri Lanka’s Department of Immigration and Emigration was disrupted on Tuesday morning by a sudden failure of the department’s computer system, before the system was restored about an hour later.
The breakdown halted the issuing of passports and other travel documents at the department’s Travel Division. The one-day service — used by applicants who need their documents urgently — was among those affected, the Daily Mirror reported.
Controller General of Immigration and Emigration Chaminda Pathiraja said early on that steps were being taken to restore the system and resume normal operations as soon as possible.
Restored within the hour
The department confirmed shortly afterwards that the fault had been rectified. Media Spokesperson Mahesh Karunadasa said the affected computer system had been restored and was functioning normally again.
Ada Derana’s first report of the disruption was filed at about 8.42 a.m. and its report of the restoration at about 9.47 a.m., putting the outage at roughly an hour of the working morning.
Neither the department nor the reports identified the cause of the failure, and no figure has been given for how many applicants were held up.
Not the first outage this year
The department’s travel document systems have gone down before. A similar computer system failure in February temporarily disrupted departmental services, including both the standard and one-day passport services, before being restored, according to the Daily Mirror.
The Travel Division issues passports under both a normal service and a one-day service, which is why a systems fault translates quickly into queues of applicants who had expected to leave with their documents the same day.
Sri Lanka is separately preparing to move to electronic passports, with Deputy Minister of Public Security Sunil Wijepala saying last week that e-passports would be introduced within a year.
Sources: Ada Derana — disruption, Ada Derana — restored, Daily Mirror — outage, Daily Mirror — restored, Hiru News.
