Akash Sama­roo

Lead Ed­i­tor-Pol­i­tics

akash.sama­roo@cnc3.co.tt

The Min­istry of Home­land Se­cu­ri­ty says more pass­ports are on the way and in­sists there is enough stock to meet cur­rent de­mand, but the min­istry has not dis­closed how many pass­port book­lets re­main avail­able, even as con­cerns from peo­ple fa­mil­iar with the sit­u­a­tion about the coun­try’s sup­ply run­ning low con­tin­ue to per­sist.

In a state­ment re­spond­ing to Guardian Me­dia’s re­port about con­cerns over Trinidad and To­ba­go’s pass­port in­ven­to­ry, Home­land Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter Roger Alexan­der sought to re­as­sure cit­i­zens that there is no pass­port short­age.

“The min­istry wish­es to make it ab­solute­ly clear that Trinidad and To­ba­go is not run­ning out of ma­chine-read­able pass­ports, and cit­i­zens can con­tin­ue to ap­ply for and re­ceive pass­ports as nor­mal,” the state­ment said.

The min­istry said the Im­mi­gra­tion Di­vi­sion has been ac­tive­ly man­ag­ing pass­port sup­plies while T&T pre­pares to tran­si­tion to a new elec­tron­ic pass­port (e-Pass­port) sys­tem.

And af­ter re­peat­ed ques­tions from Guardian Me­dia to the min­is­ter, ask­ing for in­ven­to­ry fig­ures, the Home­land Se­cu­ri­ty Min­istry pro­vid­ed some.

Ac­cord­ing to the min­istry, 50,000 ma­chine-read­able pass­port book­lets were re­ceived in Oc­to­ber 2025, fol­lowed by a fur­ther 12,000 book­lets in June 2026.

It said the Di­vi­sion cur­rent­ly is­sues few­er than 6,000 pass­ports on av­er­age each month and that ad­di­tion­al de­liv­er­ies have al­ready been arranged, with ap­prox­i­mate­ly 48,000 more ma­chine-read­able pass­port book­lets ex­pect­ed to ar­rive in Sep­tem­ber.

We un­der­stand those pass­ports are com­ing from the Cana­di­an Bank Note Com­pa­ny.

The min­istry said that by the end of 2026, the Im­mi­gra­tion Di­vi­sion would re­ceive a to­tal of 100,000 ma­chine-read­able pass­port book­lets, which it de­scribed as “more than suf­fi­cient in­ven­to­ry” to sup­port pass­port ser­vices dur­ing the tran­si­tion to the e-Pass­port sys­tem.

How­ev­er, the min­istry did not in­clude a key fig­ure that Guardian Me­dia has been ask­ing for, which is the cur­rent sup­ply of pass­port book­lets.

And Guardian Me­dia un­der­stands that while the min­istry high­light­ed the num­ber of book­lets re­ceived since Oc­to­ber, a sig­nif­i­cant por­tion of that sup­ply has al­ready been used.

A per­son fa­mil­iar with the mat­ter ex­plained that pass­port con­sump­tion has con­tin­ued month­ly since the Oc­to­ber ship­ment ar­rived and that the ad­di­tion­al book­lets re­ceived in June have al­so been help­ing to main­tain cur­rent op­er­a­tions.

But ac­cord­ing to the source, while ad­di­tion­al book­lets are ex­pect­ed lat­er this year, con­cerns re­main about the avail­able sup­ply be­fore the next ship­ment ar­rives.

Mean­while, Alexan­der said the min­istry has been care­ful­ly man­ag­ing the tran­si­tion process.

“The min­istry has been plan­ning this tran­si­tion care­ful­ly to en­sure that pass­port ser­vices con­tin­ue un­in­ter­rupt­ed while we mod­ernise our im­mi­gra­tion sys­tem. Cit­i­zens should be as­sured that there is suf­fi­cient stock to meet de­mand, ad­di­tion­al de­liv­er­ies have al­ready been sched­uled, and the work to in­tro­duce a mod­ern, se­cure e-Pass­port sys­tem is well un­der­way,” he said.

He added that the fo­cus re­mains on pro­tect­ing cit­i­zens’ iden­ti­ties, strength­en­ing na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty, and de­liv­er­ing an im­mi­gra­tion ser­vice that meets in­ter­na­tion­al stan­dards.

Cit­i­zens raise con­cerns

But while the min­istry has as­sured the pub­lic that pass­port ser­vices re­main nor­mal, some cit­i­zens have raised ques­tions about de­lays in re­ceiv­ing their doc­u­ments.

Fol­low­ing Guardian Me­dia’s re­port, sev­er­al peo­ple took to so­cial me­dia claim­ing they had been wait­ing months af­ter com­plet­ing the re­new­al process.

One per­son com­ment­ed, “So why it’s been four months since I re­newed my son’s pass­port and haven’t re­ceived it yet??”

An­oth­er asked, “So why is it per­sons who re­newed their pass­ports 3 months plus and can’t re­ceive it?”

A third per­son said, “My sons had an ap­point­ment in April 2026, up to now, no pass­port 3 months lat­er.”

Guardian Me­dia al­so checked the on­line pass­port ap­point­ment por­tal and found no avail­able dates to book a pass­port ap­point­ment for the re­main­der of the year.

E-Pass­ports com­ing

The Home­land Se­cu­ri­ty Min­istry, how­ev­er, main­tained that the tran­si­tion to the e-Pass­port sys­tem re­mains on track.

It con­firmed that in March 2026, it be­gan the pro­cure­ment process for ad­di­tion­al pass­port book­lets while al­so ad­vanc­ing the new e-Pass­port sys­tem.

An Ex­pres­sion of In­ter­est (EOI) process for the e-Pass­port sys­tem has been com­plet­ed, with sub­mis­sions cur­rent­ly be­ing eval­u­at­ed.

The min­istry said the new sys­tem will in­tro­duce on­line ap­pli­ca­tions and ap­point­ments, im­prove ef­fi­cien­cy and re­duce op­por­tu­ni­ties for abuse.

The next gen­er­a­tion of pass­ports will al­so in­clude T&T’s up­dat­ed Coat of Arms, fea­tur­ing the Steel­pan as the na­tion­al in­stru­ment, as well as en­hanced se­cu­ri­ty fea­tures to pro­tect against coun­ter­feit­ing and fraud.

The e-Pass­port will in­clude bio­met­ric tech­nol­o­gy through an em­bed­ded elec­tron­ic chip de­signed to im­prove iden­ti­ty pro­tec­tion and align T&T with mod­ern in­ter­na­tion­al trav­el stan­dards.

But sources fa­mil­iar with the pass­port process main­tained that the im­me­di­ate con­cern is not the fu­ture e-Pass­port sys­tem, but en­sur­ing there are enough cur­rent ma­chine-read­able book­lets avail­able to meet de­mand un­til the new sys­tem is ful­ly im­ple­ment­ed.

They stressed that while ad­di­tion­al sup­plies are ex­pect­ed, the com­ing months will be crit­i­cal in en­sur­ing pass­port ser­vices con­tin­ue with­out dis­rup­tion.