Immigration racing to beat deadline for same-day passport processing
Immigration director general Alexander Muteshi has exuded confidence the department will achieve its July 1, 2020 target of processing passports on the same day of application.
Muteshi, who was responding to questions from Daily Nation readers, said the Department of Immigration Services is working overtime to realise this objective.
“The same day service delivery to citizens is a presidential initiative that our CS, Dr Fred Matiang’i, is keen to have all agencies under the Ministry of Interior and Co-ordination of National Government deliver on by July 1st, 2020,” said Muteshi.
“The Directorate of Immigration has assessed and identified machinery and human resource as some of the major militating factors against the delivery on this objective. The government is already addressing our requirements by availing the necessary resource configuration to fully implement this directive.”
In addition, Muteshi said the department has already done a pilot program for the initiative and is currently making passport replacements in a day.
“We have already done a pilot test and we have achieved 40 percent of the performance target. We are currently processing passport replacements in a day. We believe that by July 1 we shall fully implement the same-day issuance of passports,” he added.
In January, CS Matiang’i announced that issuance of passports and other crucial documents such as identity, birth and death certificates will be done in one day.
He further indicated that such applications originating from outside Nairobi and abroad will however take a few days to process.
“We cannot make Kenyans slaves in their country…that they have to pay our officers to get a service… This year we can’t experience the same reputation we have had about citizen services,” said Matiang’i then.
He added at the time: “By 1st of July this year, issuance of a document and everything should be a same day service unless you are applying from outside Nairobi like for instance an ID or passport.”
According to the Interior CS, the government was set to roll out a six-month pilot program aimed at synchronising existing data to ensure that applicants seeking ID cards, passports, as well as birth and death certificates are issued within a day.