News
Passport woes continue despite Govt. assurances
View(s):By Sandun Jayawardana
Despite government assurances that it would be able to end the long queues for passports by mid-October, massive queues have been observed at the Department of Immigration and Emigration (DIE) over the past week, as many who hope to go abroad continue to face severe inconveniences owing to backlog of prospective passports that are yet to be issued by the Department.
With no end to these long queues in sight, the DIE announced on Friday (1) that it would revert to an online registration scheme for those applying for passports.
With no end to these long queues in sight, the DIE announced on Friday (1) that it would revert to an online registration scheme for those applying for passports. Pix by Eshan Fernando
Issuing a press release, Acting Controller General of immigration and Emigration Nilusha Balasuriya stated that her department has taken action to prepare an “online methodology” to make an appointment to get reserved a date and time. Action will be taken to implement such methodology in due course, she added.
The DIE further revealed that in terms of the agreement entered into with the foreign company which was awarded the tender to purchase passports, the Department has received 50, 000 ‘P’ series blank passports. A further 750, 000 blank passports are due to be delivered in stages, with about 100, 000 to be delivered at the end of November and about 150, 000 more in December. The Controller General added that procurement activities for another stock of blank passports have already commenced parallel to this process.
The DIE currently issues about 1600 passports per day to the applicants. The statement said that the Department will be able to adjust the process of issuing passports to meet the demand of applicants and it will gradually increase the number of passports being issued on a daily basis from the beginning of December.
Receipt to collect passport
The passport crisis stems from a controversial tender for the purchase of e-passports awarded during the previous government, and which was subsequently challenged in court. The Court of Appeal issued an interim order in late September halting the tender for e-passports but subsequently issued a varied interim order allowing for the DIE to purchase 750, 000 N-Series passports to resolve the severe passport shortage. The injunction against the purchase of five million e-passports remains in place until November 6.
The government has come in for embarrassment owing to the large queues seen outside the DIE in Battaramulla every weekday over the past week. Public Security Minister Vijitha Herath had earlier told the media that he believed the passport queues would be controlled from the week beginning from October 21 due to the arrival of a stock of new blank passports. However, this did not prove to be the case.
The Department has struggled to clear the backlog of passports that had built up over the past few months owing to the crisis. While Thursday was a public holiday owing to Deepavali Festival, large crowds of applicants had started queuing up outside the Department even from that evening waiting till doors opened on Friday. As people waited in line, tempers became frayed over claims that some people were trying to jump the queue.
The Sunday Times met one lady who declined to give her name. She had been given a token in early October and was now at the Department to pick up her passport. She was happy to have finally obtained her passport but expressed frustration that people were being subjected to such inconveniences of having to come on multiple days and wait for hours in line to try and obtain a passport. However, she was one of the luckier ones. There was one person waiting in line who even had a receipt for payment for a new passport issued through the normal service dated in January this year. He had been told to come on Friday to take a token that would enable him to come back on another day to claim his passport.
Minister Herath blamed the previous government for the crisis during Tuesday’s Cabinet media briefing. “If the previous government had followed the correct procedure when obtaining new passports, we would not be in this situation. The company that was awarded the contract to supply the e-passports was unable to deliver them by the scheduled date. In such a situation, the Immigration Department should have been able to issue the old passports that we had been using until now. However, the Department had not kept a sufficient stock of the old passports to meet such a situation. When we took over, the new passports were not coming and we didn’t have sufficient stocks of the old passports either. That was the situation,” he said.
He pointed out that the court challenge over the matter and the Court of Appeal’s order had also come after the new government took over. He said the government had then intervened in the matter and managed to obtain a varied interim order allowing the DIE to import 750, 000 blank passports to resolve the crisis. “If we had not done that, the people would not have any passports at all by now,” he stressed.
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