Gail Alexan­der

Ap­point­ments to process ma­chine-read­able pass­ports have now been in­creased by 15 per cent dai­ly, Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter Mar­tin Joseph said yes­ter­day.

He gave the in­for­ma­tion in the Sen­ate yes­ter­day re­ply­ing to an Op­po­si­tion ques­tion. Joseph re­it­er­at­ed in­for­ma­tion on pro­cess­ing time which he gave last year. He said pass­port-pro­cess­ing time has been re­duced from 54 days to 21 days and "is mov­ing to­wards a 10-day time­frame." "This will fur­ther re­duce the wait­ing pe­ri­od cur­rent­ly ex­pe­ri­enced," he added. Joseph said there were six of­fices at which in­ter­views for pass­ports were con­duct­ed. The pe­ri­od for ap­point­ments at these of­fices vary, based on the ca­pac­i­ty of the re­spec­tive of­fices and the vol­ume of re­quests for ap­point­ments re­ceived. At present, Joseph said the wait­ing pe­ri­od for per­sons seek­ing ap­point­ment dates range ini­tial­ly from one to two years.

How­ev­er, these dates were usu­al­ly ad­just­ed up­ward as can­cel­la­tions oc­cur. Joseph added: "The ex­tent of these move­ments is there­fore de­ter­mined by the pat­tern of can­cel­la­tions. Since March 13, 2009 there have been 101,853 per­sons whose ap­point­ment dates could be moved for­ward. "Of that num­ber 95,556 opt­ed to have them brought for­ward. Those ap­point­ment dates, which were not moved for­ward, rep­re­sent­ed per­sons who de­clined to do so, such as those re­turn­ing from abroad to re­new their pass­ports and who found it dif­fi­cult to change their sched­uled trav­el dates." Joseph said there were al­so some per­sons who the ap­point­ed ser­vice provider–Di­re­cOne–could not con­tact for vary­ing rea­sons.

He added: "Ad­di­tion­al­ly there is at present an ap­prox­i­mate 30 per cent no-show by ap­pli­cants with ap­point­ments at pass­port of­fices dai­ly. "In or­der to close this gap the Im­mi­gra­tion Di­vi­sion has re­quest­ed that Di­re­cOne in­crease the num­ber of ap­point­ments grant­ed a day by 15 per cent. "This ini­tia­tive should al­so re­sult in a de­creased wait­ing pe­ri­od," Joseph said. He said up to two weeks ago there were about 30,000 pass­ports –and own­ers' af­fil­i­at­ed doc­u­ments per­tain­ing to this–await­ing col­lec­tion. Joseph said the sit­u­a­tion pos­es se­cu­ri­ty and stor­age risks.

He said Gov­ern­ment, which be­gan is­su­ing new pass­ports in 2007, would en­sure all na­tion­als have ma­chine-read­able pass­ports in time for the No­vem­ber 2015 dead­line set by the In­ter­na­tion­al Civ­il Avi­a­tion body. Un­til then, he said, T&T na­tion­als could con­tin­ue trav­el­ling to in­ter­na­tion­al des­ti­na­tions, in­clud­ing US, us­ing valid non-ma­chine read­able pass­ports.