Rhon­dor Dowlat-Ros­tant

The Im­mi­gra­tion Di­vi­sion of the Min­istry of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty is mov­ing ahead with ful­ly digi­tis­ing and up­grad­ing its sys­tems to make it eas­i­er and safer for peo­ple ap­ply­ing for their pass­ports.

Soon to come on stream will be a ser­vice al­low­ing the home de­liv­ery of pass­ports via TT Post’s couri­er ser­vice.

This was an­nounced by Min­is­ter of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Stu­art Young dur­ing a press con­fer­ence yes­ter­day. He de­scribed the di­vi­sion’s first phase/ini­tia­tive as a “pos­i­tive step.”

Young said the Im­mi­gra­tion Di­vi­sion had up­grad­ed its sys­tems dur­ing the stay-at-home pro­vi­sions in April and the de­liv­ery of pass­ports to a per­son’s home was one of the first ini­tia­tives he agreed with when they pre­sent­ed it to him back then.

Im­mi­gra­tion al­so shift­ed its re­sources to clear the back­log of pass­port pro­duc­tion, he added.

“I am pleased to an­nounce that the en­tire back­log has been cleared and sys­tems have now been put in place to have pass­ports ready for is­su­ing be­tween five to ten days. Cur­rent­ly, there are 48,000 pass­ports ready for de­liv­ery and the pro­duc­tion unit at Im­mi­gra­tion is pro­cess­ing pass­port ap­pli­ca­tions in a much faster pe­ri­od,” Young said.

He al­so dis­closed that the ap­point­ment process has been vast­ly im­proved, with ap­point­ments be­ing avail­able with­in one to two weeks via the on­line ap­point­ment sys­tem.

“Peo­ple re­port­ed that it took a pe­ri­od of one month to three months, this is now down to one to two weeks,” Young said.

Young said on av­er­age, be­tween 600 to 800 ap­pli­ca­tions for pass­ports are re­ceived dai­ly.

“One of the next ini­tia­tives that we are mov­ing to­wards is hav­ing a full on­line ap­pli­ca­tion and de­liv­ery process. So one of the next things Im­mi­gra­tion is al­ready look­ing at is that you can ap­ply on­line in the fu­ture, pay for your pass­port on­line and then TT Post will de­liv­er the com­plet­ed pass­ports,” he said.

An­oth­er ini­tia­tive be­ing ex­plored with Chief Im­mi­gra­tion Of­fi­cer Char­maine Ghan­di-An­drews and her staff, he said, is the even­tu­al re­open­ing of the bor­ders and how it is to be done.

“We need to start plan­ning for the even­tu­al open­ing of the bor­ders and I’ve al­ready spo­ken to Min­is­ter of Trans­port Ro­han Sinanan on how we do it,” Young said.

“We are go­ing to look at the com­put­er­i­sa­tion and the use of bio­met­rics from an Im­mi­gra­tion per­spec­tive and the do­ing away of phys­i­cal Im­mi­gra­tion forms.”

Af­ter the first phase and proof of the suc­cess of the TT Post couri­er ser­vice, Young said Im­mi­gra­tion will move to ap­pli­ca­tion by mail, “of­fer­ing it to cit­i­zens over 60 years old be­cause they don’t have to pay for their pass­ports.”