Kathmandu, October 12
For the first time in Nepal’s government system, the Department of Labour has introduced the iris recognition system in tracking records of workers flying to other countries.
Now, the Department will capture patterns of irises in eyes of the migrant workers when they receive labour permits to work abroad.
The Department’s spokesperson Mohan Adhikari says his office has decided to go for iris recognition as the data obtained from scanning of fingerprints involved a number of problems.
Iris in a person’s eye is believed to be static throughout life and it is easily visible. The part is unique to every person. Therefore, iris recognition is said to be a reliable technology among many options currently used to recognise a person. It has fewer chances of producing mismatching results than that of other technologies including retinal scanning and fingerprint.
Many countries in the world have been using this technology to regulate visa-free cross-border travel of their citizens and to issue national identity cards to them.
Meanwhile, some stakeholders have raised questions over the security of biometric data as they government does not have any specific law to protect them till the date.
Information technology expert Manohar Bhattarai fears that unauthentic use of the data might pose threats to national security.
The Department, however, says the data will be protected in Singhadarbar and cannot be misused.
