The Principal Secretary State Department for Immigration and Citizen Services, Amb. Julius Bitok has announced that the government has put in place proper strategies to ensure citizens get necessary identification documents like birth certificates, Identity cards and passports within a short period of time.
The PS spoke during his tour to Eldoret to assess the status of civil registration, immigration issues, refugee affairs and to identify challenges experienced by officers on the ground in order to support them to improve on service delivery to Kenyans.
“The purpose of my visit is to really see what is going on the ground and be able to reach out to the staff to listen to their issues; to understand some of the challenges the officers are going through as they discharge their duties so as to support them to give better and more efficient services,” said Amb. Bitok.
He lauded the immigration and civil registration officers for their commendable work to ensure Kenyans get crucial documents on time, noting that there are no reported cases that any person from any Kenyan community has ever been denied his or her constitutional right to get identity card, birth certificate or passport.
Ambassador Bitok affirmed that the country has enough stock of passport booklets adding: “The supplier had promised that by end of today (Friday 12th,) we shall have enough stock of all the three sets of passports, that is series A which contains 34 pages, B of 48 pages and series C which has 66 pages. We had a little bit of backlog but we have been working on and I want to assure the country that we now have enough stock of passports to take us forth,” he said.
The PS indicated that the government has put proper strategies in place to ensure Kenyans get Identity Cards and passports within 21 days of application.
He further noted that with the digitization, there is no problem about where the passports are printed noting that they were initially printed in the regions but the exercise has currently been consolidated to the headquarters.
He revealed that the government intends to increase the capacity of printing passports by July 1st this year, from the current approximately 2000 to about 5000 daily to meet the required demand which had been faced with delays due to less capacity of printing in the country.
“What has been delaying the passports is the fact that we have been having less capacity of printing, we have been having two printers but right now, I have authorised we buy three additional printers and we are going to have another additional 300 000 booklets in the next one month,” he said.
“From July 1st, I want to assure Kenyans that there will be no more delays in issuance of passports, it will not matter where you applied from; whether in Eldoret or from Lodwar you should be able to get it within the shortest time possible because we have put in proper strategies, we have known the demand,” he added.
By Ekuwam Sylvester and Judy Too
