By Peter Ochieng
The government is steadily moving towards processing of passports within three working days, Cabinet Secretary (CS) for Interior and National Administration Kithure Kindiki has announced.
Kindiki on Monday visited the department of immigration services at Nyayo House, Nairobi, for a follow up on the reduction of passports backlog initiated by his ministry months ago.
He inspected the new passport printing equipment, and was staken through the production process. He also interacted with a host of passport applicants.
He said waiting period for processing of a passport will reduce from 21 days starting May 1st, before coming down further to three days by start of November, 2024.
“The government reiterates its commitment to ensure that effective 1st May, 2024, all applications for the Kenyan passport will be processed within 21 days from the date of application. This period will reduce to 7 days from 1st August, 2024 and 3 days from 1st November, 2024,” he declared.
“The historical backlog in the processing of the Kenyan passport has been conclusively resolved and the bottlenecks that had resulted in frustration of many applicants addressed,” added the CS who has severally been ranked the most performing in President William Ruto’s administration.
He said the issue of the backlog has been sorted once and for all, courtesy of the government having facilitated the acquisition of adequate passport printing equipment, paid all the pending supplier bills, and addressed the supply chain constraints.
“The backlog of pending passports that stood at 724,000 by March 11, 2024 has been resolved, and the 50,000 applications that were pending on Thursday, last week have been produced and are ready for delivery,” he added.
By next week, the CS said Kenyans whose passports are ready should be notified of where to collect the documents.
“Directed the Directorate of Immigration to embark on a Rapid Results Initiative (RRI) to expedite the collection of passports, and publish names of the applicants and the designated collection points by next week.”
“Tasked the Directorate of Immigration to develop a passport production and collection sustainability plan within this week, to ensure that there is no backlog reoccurrence.”
In September, 2023, the government through Kindiki’s ministry launched a 30-day Rapid Response Initiative (RRI) for delivery of uncollected passports.
Kithure Kindiki at the time announced that the exercise was aimed at having the 87, 574 uncollected passports picked by their owners, within the shortest time possible.
Data released by his ministry revealed that Nairobi was leading with 36,170 uncollected passports at Nyayo House, Embu Regional Office (10,409), Eldoret Regional Office (9,938), Kisumu Regional Office (9,515), Nakuru Regional Office (8,023), Kisii Regional Office (7,979) and Mombasa 5,424.
