Akash Sama­roo

Lead Ed­i­tor-Pol­i­tics

akash.sama­roo@cnc3.co.tt

The Min­istry of Home­land Se­cu­ri­ty has se­cured an ear­ly ship­ment of 8,000 pass­port book­lets, pro­vid­ing some re­lief to what sources at the Im­mi­gra­tion Di­vi­sion have de­scribed as a dan­ger­ous­ly de­plet­ed na­tion­al stock.

How­ev­er, Guardian Me­dia has been in­formed that while the new sup­ply will help re­plen­ish the dwin­dling in­ven­to­ry, de­lays in pass­port is­suance will per­sist, with a sig­nif­i­cant back­log and some ap­pli­cants now wait­ing as long as ten weeks.

Guardian Me­dia un­der­stands the 8,000 ma­chine-read­able pass­port book­lets, sup­plied by the Cana­da Bank Note Com­pa­ny, the coun­try’s usu­al sup­pli­er of pass­port book­lets, ar­rived ahead of sched­ule, hav­ing ini­tial­ly been ex­pect­ed dur­ing the first week of Sep­tem­ber.

An­oth­er 40,000 book­lets are ex­pect­ed to ar­rive be­tween Sep­tem­ber 30 and Oc­to­ber 7, com­plet­ing the ap­prox­i­mate­ly 48,000 ad­di­tion­al pass­ports the Min­istry pre­vi­ous­ly an­nounced were be­ing sourced.

The ear­ly ar­rival comes at a sig­nif­i­cant time be­cause Im­mi­gra­tion Di­vi­sion of­fi­cials have been care­ful­ly man­ag­ing the coun­try’s re­main­ing pass­port stock for sev­er­al weeks, slow­ing the rate of is­suance to pre­vent sup­plies from be­ing ex­haust­ed be­fore ad­di­tion­al book­lets ar­rived.

Sources at the Di­vi­sion told Guardian Me­dia the new book­lets rep­re­sent rough­ly one month’s nor­mal sup­ply, while the stock al­ready on hand amounts to slight­ly more than an­oth­er month’s sup­ply.

With the ad­di­tion­al ship­ment now avail­able and an­oth­er 40,000 book­lets ex­pect­ed with­in weeks, of­fi­cials be­lieve there should be enough stock to car­ry the Di­vi­sion through the end of Oc­to­ber and pos­si­bly in­to mid-No­vem­ber.

But the im­proved in­ven­to­ry po­si­tion will not im­me­di­ate­ly trans­late in­to a re­turn to nor­mal pass­port pro­cess­ing times.

Guardian Me­dia un­der­stands that the slow­down in is­suance re­mains in ef­fect be­cause of the size of the back­log ac­cu­mu­lat­ed while of­fi­cials were at­tempt­ing to con­serve the crit­i­cal­ly low stock.

There is, how­ev­er, con­cern with­in the Im­mi­gra­tion Di­vi­sion that pro­duc­tion now needs to be in­creased, par­tic­u­lar­ly to deal with ap­pli­cants whose doc­u­ments have been pend­ing for more than two months.

Sources said some cit­i­zens have now been wait­ing ap­prox­i­mate­ly ten weeks for their pass­ports, a sit­u­a­tion de­scribed as un­prece­dent­ed in re­cent years and un­fair to ap­pli­cants who have been caught in the back­log.

The lat­est de­vel­op­ment fol­lows months of con­cerns sur­round­ing the coun­try’s pass­port in­ven­to­ry.

On Ju­ly 29, Guardian Me­dia re­port­ed that the slow is­suance of pass­ports was con­tin­u­ing as im­mi­gra­tion of­fi­cials at­tempt­ed to stretch the re­main­ing stock un­til the ex­pect­ed Sep­tem­ber ship­ment. At the time, the in­ven­to­ry was un­der­stood to have reached a crit­i­cal­ly low lev­el, with con­cerns that pro­cess­ing ap­pli­ca­tions at the nor­mal rate could quick­ly ex­haust the avail­able book­lets.

That fol­lowed an ear­li­er Guardian Me­dia re­port rais­ing con­cerns about dwin­dling sup­plies and in­creased wait times for cit­i­zens seek­ing new or re­newed pass­ports.

The Min­istry of Home­land Se­cu­ri­ty sub­se­quent­ly sought to re­as­sure the pub­lic, main­tain­ing that Trinidad and To­ba­go was not run­ning out of ma­chine-read­able pass­ports and that cit­i­zens could con­tin­ue to ap­ply for and re­ceive the doc­u­ments.

In Ju­ly, the Min­istry dis­closed that 50,000 ma­chine-read­able pass­port book­lets had been re­ceived in Oc­to­ber 2025, fol­lowed by an­oth­er 12,000 in June this year.

It al­so said the Im­mi­gra­tion Di­vi­sion is­sues few­er than 6,000 pass­ports per month on av­er­age and an­nounced that ap­prox­i­mate­ly 48,000 ad­di­tion­al book­lets were ex­pect­ed in Sep­tem­ber.

How­ev­er, de­spite re­peat­ed ques­tions from Guardian Me­dia, the Min­istry did not dis­close ex­act­ly how many un­used pass­port book­lets re­mained in stock.

The Min­istry had main­tained that the ad­di­tion­al ship­ments would pro­vide suf­fi­cient in­ven­to­ry to main­tain pass­port ser­vices while Trinidad and To­ba­go tran­si­tions to a new elec­tron­ic pass­port sys­tem.

But in­for­ma­tion ob­tained by Guardian Me­dia in­di­cat­ed that the im­me­di­ate prob­lem was the amount of stock avail­able to bridge the gap un­til those ad­di­tion­al sup­plies ar­rived, forc­ing im­mi­gra­tion of­fi­cials to reg­u­late the pace at which pass­ports were pro­duced.

The ar­rival of the first 8,000 book­lets now eas­es some of that pres­sure.

How­ev­er, the back­log cre­at­ed dur­ing the pe­ri­od of re­strict­ed is­suance means the ef­fects of the short­age are like­ly to con­tin­ue be­ing felt by ap­pli­cants even as the coun­try’s phys­i­cal stock of pass­port book­lets im­proves.

The chal­lenge now fac­ing the Im­mi­gra­tion Di­vi­sion is bal­anc­ing the need to in­crease pro­duc­tion and clear ap­pli­ca­tions that have been out­stand­ing for sev­er­al weeks against the need to en­sure the new­ly ar­rived stock is not ex­haust­ed be­fore the much larg­er ship­ment lands be­tween Sep­tem­ber 30 and Oc­to­ber 7.

Mean­while, the Gov­ern­ment is con­tin­u­ing work on its tran­si­tion to an e-Pass­port sys­tem.

The Min­istry pre­vi­ous­ly said an Ex­pres­sion of In­ter­est process had been com­plet­ed and sub­mis­sions were be­ing eval­u­at­ed.

The pro­posed sys­tem is ex­pect­ed to in­tro­duce pass­ports with em­bed­ded elec­tron­ic chips and bio­met­ric tech­nol­o­gy, along with en­hanced se­cu­ri­ty fea­tures and Trinidad and To­ba­go’s up­dat­ed Coat of Arms.