The Interior Ministry has raised the issue of extending the term of substituting old passports for electronic passports that will be used for reregistration of SIM cards.
Tajik Interior Minister Ramazon Rahimzoda remarked this today at a meeting with reporters.
Recall, the deputy head of the Communications Committee under the Government of Tajikistan, Ilhom Atoyev, told reporters in Dushanbe on July 15 that if people fail to reregister their SIM cards by electronic identification cards, the term of reregistration of SIM card will probably be extended.
“If the issue of reregistration of SIM cards is not resolved until August, we will apply to the Interior Ministry with solicitation to extend the term of substituting old passports for the new ones,” Atoyev said, noting that only 1.880 million SIM cards have been reregistered in the country by July 11, 2019.
According to data from the communications service agency, a total number of SIM cards in Tajikistan is more than 6.4 million, but only 4.8 million of them are active.
Only a type of passport introduced in 2014 now can be used for registration of SIM cards and all SIM cards that were registered with use of an old type of passport should be re-registered until August 15.
Tajik authorities introduced new requirements for selling and registering SIM cards in February this year.
Changes made to the government’s decree “On the Procedure and Requirements for Connection to Telecommunications Networks and the Provision of Services Related to Them” provides for introducing new requirements for selling SIM cards. Tajikistan citizens are now allowed to buy only up to two SIM cards in all and only a type of passport introduced in 2014 can be used for registration of SIM cards.
The decree on making changes to the mentioned government’s decree was signed by the President on February 9 and took effect on February 15 after it was published in Jumhuriyat newspaper, an official mouthpiece of the Government of Tajikistan.
In this connection, the Interior Ministry’s passport offices have been tasked to function from 8:00 am to 10:00 pm.
The electronic identification card was introduced in Tajikistan in March 2014.
The decree reads the following: “With the aim of ensuring constitutional rights of citizens of the Republic of Tajikistan and public order, and based on Article 69 of the Constitution of the Republic of Tajikistan, I hereby decree to issue identification cards for citizens of the Republic of Tajikistan as of 1 March, 2014.”
With that, the internal passport of the citizen of the Republic of Tajikistan is valid within the territory of Tajikistan until its expiration, which means that both the electronic and the paper document will be valid.
