Following the liberalization of the visa regime between the EU and Moldova, the number of people applying for biometric passports has considerably increased. In April, the local document issuing subdivisions of the Information Resources Center IS “Registru” received by 2,000 applications a day on average, an increase of 68% on January – April, IPN reports, quoting the information provided by “Registru”.

Of the total number of applications registered in April, 40,629 or 42% were submitted in the municipality of Chisinau, 15% of which to the Centru office.

According to “Registru”, the rising number of applicants is due not only to the liberalization of the visa regime with the EU, but also to the preparations for the summer vacation and to the students graduating from the secondary school, who reached 16 and need identity cards.

Another important factor that led to a higher number of applications for identification papers is the mass replacement of the Soviet-type passports that is to end by September 1, 2014. Over 25,000 identity cards were issued in April alone.

IS “Registru” will not yet increase the number of employees and will not extend the work program of offices. These measures will be opportune if the number of applications increases to 3,000 a day. At the same time, measures were taken to reduce the queues at the offices. The passport applications can be submitted to the Centru, Balti and Comrat document issuing offices on any day of the week.

The other offices of Chisinau municipality work from Tuesday through Saturday, between 8am and 5pm. Sunday and Monday are nonworking days for them.