The Directorate General for Passports is to start registering all expatriate women on its biometrics system from Saturday, March 31. Col. Badr Bin Muhammad Al-Malik, Director of the Information Affairs Administration and Spokesman of the Directorate General for Passports, said the system will be implemented across the Kingdom. The first stage will begin when expatriate women submit applications for the first issue of a new residence permit (iqama), when transferring sponsorship, changing their profession or replacing a lost iqama. Al-Malik called on employers to visit the fingerprint centers to register the expatriate female employees. They can visit the directorate's website www.gdp.gov.sa to see a list of all the centers. A biometrics system includes, but is not limited to, fingerprints, face recognition, retina or iris recognition, palm prints and DNA, according to Wikipedia. Meanwhile according to a circular issued by the authorities, all expatriates living in Saudi Arabia should have machine-readable passports by Nov. 24, 2012, failing which, they may face problems while commuting in and out of the country, the Saudi government has said.
