Egypt's foreign ministry announced on Monday that it has been making every possible effort to issue digitalised passports to Egyptians living abroad.

Amr Awad, the foreign minister’s assistant, called on Egyptians living abroad - especially in Gulf States - to arrange with their consulates to receive new passports as soon as possible, with the current ones due to expire on 24 November.

Amr added that the foreign ministry has issued around 130,000 new electronic passports in the past few months.

In July, the then foreign ministry spokesman Badr Abdel-Atty said that some Egyptian embassies house many passports yet to be picked up, especially in Kuwait where the embassy still has 3,200 new digitalised passports to be collected.

Egypt introduced digitalised passports in 2008.

Passports that are not machine readable will no longer be valid for international travel as of 24 November 2015, according to regulations from the United Nations' International Civil Aviation organisation.