IN a concerted effort to speed-up immigration clearance at Kai Tak, the Immigration Department says it will begin installing time-saving swipe machines at the airport this September, capable of intelligently reading travellers' passports and Hong Kong identity cards.
The department's computer whizz-kids have been working on developing the technology to enable immigration staff to swipe travellers' identity (ID) cards and new generation passports through an optical censor and save valuable data inputting time.
The new-style passports already being introduced in Hong Kong and some other parts of the world, like Europe, have a strip of numbers, letters and shapes running along the bottom of the back page that a computer can read.
Immigration officers would still be required to quickly check the pictures against travellers' faces, at least for the time being.
Further down the road, the department is considering introducing smart cards with a micro-chip inside carrying the bearers' thumb print.
Passengers would then be able to swiftly swipe their cards through a Mass Transit Railway-style computerised turnstile, place their thumbs over a censor and, if the twtment spokesman Eric Chan said question marks had arisen over the security, durability and cost of the cards.