Interior Cabinet Secretary Prof. Kithure Kindiki now says the passport backlog at the Immigration offices has been technically cleared and the documents are now ready for collection

Speaking on Tuesday at Nyayo House in Nairobi, CS Kindiki said the government had dealt with the backlog mess which had for years been a subject of public outcry.

He highlighted that the Directorate for Immigration had for years been abandoned and unfunded and thus had no adequate machinery for production.

“In the public accountability address, I did acknowledge there was a public outcry about our slow pace in issuance of passports. The core of the problem was because of many years of no investment at the Directorate of Immigration,” he said.

“We have been able to turn things around and backlog which was accumulated over many years has been technically addressed.”

The CS said the new reforms put in place to streamline services and efficiency in the Immigration department would see a turnaround in production, issuance, delivery and customer services.

 As for the Issuance and delivery, Kindiki said the government had launched a Rapid Result Initiative (RRI) where passports produced must be collected within 30 days failure to which they will be disposed of.

The CS said 87,574 passports had been produced over the last one month and are already due for collection, with the majority being at Nyayo House.

‘’The distribution of uncollected passports is as follows; - Nyayo House (Nairobi) - 36,170, Embu Regional Office (10,409), Eldoret Regional Office (9,938), Kisumu Regional Office (9,515), Nakuru Regional Office (8,023), Kisii Regional Office (7,971) and Mombasa Regional Office ( 5,424), said Kindiki.

He highlighted that every Wednesday, the Immigration Department will publish a list of all applicants whose passports are due for collection the following week, to streamline the collection process.

“Every Wednesday we will be publicizing the people who must come for their passports for the entire week. They will be listed for the entire week,” he said.

“All applicants must collect them; those who will not collect their passports as scheduled after the expiry of the notice we will treat the uncollected documents as uncollected goods and we will dispose of them.”

The Cabinet Secretary further warned that applicants whose passports would be disposed of would also be required to reapply and pay a fine.

He says that after the RRI government systems will be audited to be able to produce passports within a week with a long-term goal seeking to reduce the production days to three.

“We are going to work through this process and starting Monday we will be very busy. After the RRI we will audit our system to be able to produce passports within 7 days. Our vision will eventually be to reduce the 7 days to 3 days,” he noted.

In order to address the challenge of overcrowding and citizens spending hours in queuing bays, Prof Kindiki underscored that the government has resolved to enlist National Youth Service (NYS) officers to help with crowd management and ensure shorter queues are maintained with better customer services.

“We will enlist officers of NYS to assist with crowd management. Nobody going forward should spend more than half an hour seeking services at this directorate,” he stated.

Likewise, the CS says a boost in production is eminent since a procurement process for printing machines was underway with night shifts for staff expected to continue.

“We are not there yet in terms of the capacity of our production, therefore we have ordered more printing machines...Day and night shifts to remain,” he said.