Manama: Kuwait will next month introduce biometric fingerprinting at its airport to prevent illegal immigrants and other people barred from entering or leaving the country, from bypassing border controls.
According to local Arabic daily Al Watan, the biometric fingerprint check will be used starting April 1 and will be applied in its first phase to foreigners, but will later be generalised to include Kuwaitis.
It will also be extended at all Kuwaiti land and sea border control points.
"The goal is to make sure that nobody can abuse the system and leave or arrive in Kuwait with a forged document, an unnamed source quoted by the daily said.
"The scanning will also prevent those barred from entering or leaving Kuwait from using malicious ways to beat the system," the source said.
The check will take about three seconds on average and will not disrupt the flow of passengers, the source said.
