Passport backlog now at 35K from 100K as Immigration races to beat deadline

According to the Ministry of Interior, the State Department for Immigration and Citizen Services has made significant progress in addressing the backlog, with approximately 3,500 to 4,000 passports being printed per day.

This has seen the backlog reduce from over 100,000 to around 35,000.

CS Kithure Kindiki met the departmental senior officials to receive a progress report and later interacted with members of the public to receive sentiments on how customer experience and overall service delivery has improved.

Immigration Principal Secretary Julius Bitok and Immigration Director General Evelyn Cheluget were also present.

The Ministry of Interior had set a deadline to have the backlog cleared which is due in five days.

This comes amid an ongoing crackdown to weed out what CS Kindiki termed as corrupt cartels and streamline the passport-issuing exercise and other services.

Kindiki has also said that stiffer regulations will also be imposed, which will make passport collections time-bound, noting that citizens must also play their part in achieving the move to streamline the Immigration department.

“I think part of it is members of the public. They apply for passports and then forget… After that, we will withdraw because the law allows us to withdraw passports,” said Kindiki during an impromptu visit to the Embu Regional Immigration Department offices.

On their part, the Immigration Department has introduced a raft of new measures to improve the processing of Kenyan passports. 

They include hiring more people, establishing an emergency counter--with day and night shifts available Monday through Sunday--and accepting applications from 7:00 a.m. to 8:30 p.m.