France: 1.5 million Algerians barred from returning home by the next 15 days!

The Minister of the Interior and Local Assemblies Noureddine Bedoui, is slated to travel to France on Wednesday to inquire about the conditions for issuing biometric passports in Algerian Consulates.

About a million and a half million of our nationals settled in France do not possess a biometric passport and they fear that with the new regulations that will be implemented AS from January 1^st 2016, they wouldn’t be able to travel back to Algeria.

The coordinator of the Movement of Algerian citizens in France, Aït Omar Mokhtar, told “Echorouk” in a telephone statement that only 30% of Algerians living in France had secured these biometric passports, stressing that the instructions of the World Civil Aviation Organization are clear-cut about the requirement for a visa to be able to travel from one country to another where they are requested.

To facilitate the issuance of biometric passports for all and sundry and be in line with the set deadline, the latter suggested using the Web to unclog Consulates where a large number of long-queuing Algerians are daily “humiliated” at their doors.

For his part, MP Noureddine Belmeddah, representing the Algerian community in the fourth region of Europe underscored that contacts are now underway with the relevant Algerian authorities in a bid to ease up this binding measure until all the bi-nationals secure  their biometric passports in due time.

He also advocated the recourse to the Web by giving personal appointments for the biometric passport-seekers to show up at the various consulates in order to lessen the current undue pressure.