Passport alarm

Akash Sama­roo

Lead Ed­i­tor-Pol­i­tics

akash.sama­[email protected]

Trinidad and To­ba­go’s cur­rent sup­ply of pass­port book­lets is al­most ex­haust­ed, with con­cerns now emerg­ing that the Gov­ern­ment has in­struct­ed im­mi­gra­tion of­fi­cials to slow the rate of is­suance as it tries to pre­vent the coun­try from run­ning out of the crit­i­cal trav­el doc­u­ment en­tire­ly.

Guardian Me­dia un­der­stands that the re­main­ing stock has fall­en to a crit­i­cal­ly low lev­el and while a source fa­mil­iar with the sit­u­a­tion could not con­firm the ex­act num­ber of pass­ports cur­rent­ly avail­able, the warn­ing was clear - un­less new sup­plies ar­rive soon, there may be no book­lets left to is­sue to cit­i­zens.

In­for­ma­tion ob­tained by Guardian Me­dia, how­ev­er, sug­gests the prob­lem was not un­ex­pect­ed.

Peo­ple with knowl­edge of the sit­u­a­tion say the Im­mi­gra­tion Di­vi­sion raised con­cerns with the Min­istry of Home­land Se­cu­ri­ty on more than one oc­ca­sion since the new ad­min­is­tra­tion took of­fice last year, warn­ing that pass­port stocks were de­clin­ing and that ur­gent ac­tion was need­ed to avoid a short­age.

The min­istry was in­formed in mid-2025 that there was one year’s worth of book­lets, which could be around 80-100,000 doc­u­ments.

How­ev­er, months lat­er, the coun­try is now fac­ing what of­fi­cials feared, dwin­dling sup­plies and un­cer­tain­ty over when the next ma­jor ship­ment will ar­rive.

Sources in­di­cate that the cur­rent chal­lenge stems from a pro­cure­ment process that be­gan un­der the pre­vi­ous ad­min­is­tra­tion but was nev­er com­plet­ed.

Guardian Me­dia was told that in 2023, the gov­ern­ment went out to ten­der for the sup­ply of Trinidad and To­ba­go pass­ports.

Fol­low­ing that process, Cana­di­an Bank Note Com­pa­ny (CBN), which has sup­plied the coun­try’s pass­ports since 2007, was award­ed the con­tract in Oc­to­ber 2024 to con­tin­ue pro­vid­ing the doc­u­ments.

The com­pa­ny was ex­pect­ed to sup­ply T&T’s next gen­er­a­tion of pass­ports, in­clud­ing the move to­ward elec­tron­ic pass­ports, which con­tain an em­bed­ded chip and en­hanced se­cu­ri­ty fea­tures.

How­ev­er, while the award was made, the fi­nal con­tract was not signed be­fore the 2025 Gen­er­al Elec­tion.

Sources close to the process ex­plained that the le­gal re­view and con­tract fi­nal­i­sa­tion stage was un­der­way, but the change in ad­min­is­tra­tion oc­curred be­fore the agree­ment was for­mal­ly ex­e­cut­ed. As a re­sult, al­though CBN re­ceived the award, no new long-term con­tract was com­plet­ed.

Guardian Me­dia un­der­stands that by mid-2025, con­cerns were al­ready be­ing raised in­ter­nal­ly that the ex­ist­ing sup­ply would on­ly last ap­prox­i­mate­ly an­oth­er year if no new con­tract arrange­ment was fi­nalised.

The Im­mi­gra­tion Di­vi­sion, ac­cord­ing to those fa­mil­iar with the dis­cus­sions, re­peat­ed­ly flagged the risk that the coun­try could face a short­age by mid-2026.

Guardian Me­dia un­der­stands that both the Chief Im­mi­gra­tion Of­fi­cer and Deputy Chief Im­mi­gra­tion Of­fi­cer were sent on leave for ap­prox­i­mate­ly four months this year.

Dur­ing that pe­ri­od, the is­sue of the coun­try’s pass­port sup­ply re­mained un­re­solved.

Guardian Me­dia was told that dur­ing this time, a di­rec­tive was al­so giv­en to de­lay the pro­duc­tion of pass­ports to ap­pli­cants. The wait­ing time for the is­suance of pass­ports has al­most quadru­pled in the in­ter­im, as the Gov­ern­ment at­tempts to man­age the low stock.

Sources say the de­lays have al­so af­fect­ed ex­pe­dit­ed ap­pli­ca­tions. For ex­am­ple, pass­ports re­quest­ed through the ex­pe­dit­ed process, which were pre­vi­ous­ly com­plet­ed with­in ap­prox­i­mate­ly two to three days, are now tak­ing be­tween sev­en and ten days to be processed.

Those fa­mil­iar with the sit­u­a­tion warn that if more cit­i­zens be­gin ap­ply­ing for ex­pe­dit­ed pass­ports be­cause of fears over the short­age, the re­main­ing stock could be de­plet­ed even faster.

Mean­while, in March 2026, sources say the pre­vi­ous let­ter of award to Cana­di­an Bank Note was can­celled, ef­fec­tive­ly leav­ing T&T with­out a long-term pass­port sup­pli­er.

The Gov­ern­ment sub­se­quent­ly moved to­ward a new pro­cure­ment process, in­clud­ing an Ex­pres­sion of In­ter­est (EOI) invit­ing com­pa­nies to in­di­cate their will­ing­ness to sup­ply pass­ports.

How­ev­er, those fa­mil­iar with pass­port pro­cure­ment warn that se­lect­ing a new sup­pli­er is not a sim­ple process.

The EOI stage must be fol­lowed by eval­u­a­tion, short­list­ing, a re­quest for pro­pos­als, fur­ther as­sess­ment, con­tract ne­go­ti­a­tions and fi­nal ap­proval.

Un­der nor­mal cir­cum­stances, they say that process can take sev­er­al months or longer.

Guardian Me­dia reached out to Chief Im­mi­gra­tion Of­fi­cer Mary Roseann St Hill-Bil­louin but she did not re­spond to our ques­tions be­fore press time.

With sup­plies run­ning low, Guardian Me­dia un­der­stands ef­forts were lat­er made to ob­tain an ad­di­tion­al quan­ti­ty of the cur­rent ma­chine-read­able pass­ports, rather than the new­er e-pass­port.

It is un­der­stood that Cana­di­an Bank Note was able to pro­vide a lim­it­ed ship­ment of book­lets from ex­ist­ing stock linked to the pre­vi­ous arrange­ment with the State.

How­ev­er, sources say that sup­ply on­ly pro­vid­ed tem­po­rary re­lief.

Con­tact­ed yes­ter­day, Min­is­ter of Home­land Se­cu­ri­ty Roger Alexan­der con­firmed that Gov­ern­ment was mov­ing ahead with plans to tran­si­tion from the cur­rent ma­chine-read­able pass­ports to elec­tron­ic pass­ports.

How­ev­er, he did not di­rect­ly an­swer ques­tions about how many pass­port book­lets re­main in stock, how long the cur­rent sup­ply is ex­pect­ed to last, when ad­di­tion­al book­lets will ar­rive, or whether a di­rec­tive was giv­en to slow the pro­cess­ing of pass­ports to pre­serve the re­main­ing sup­ply.

Asked about re­ports that T&T was close to run­ning out of pass­ports and that con­cerns had pre­vi­ous­ly been brought to the min­istry’s at­ten­tion, Alexan­der point­ed to the planned tran­si­tion to e-pass­ports.

“Ex­pect­ed, we are about to trans­fer from our present use of the ma­chine-read­able pass­port to the e-pass­port, so we are look­ing to tran­si­tion,” Alexan­der said.

Asked whether a new provider had been se­lect­ed for the e-pass­port sys­tem and how soon ad­di­tion­al pass­port book­lets would be avail­able, Alexan­der re­spond­ed, “The process has al­ready be­gun and we should be get­ting a pos­i­tive word soon.”

Guardian Me­dia then asked whether there was a spe­cif­ic time­frame for sourc­ing more pass­port book­lets, not­ing that sources in­di­cat­ed the cur­rent sup­ply was crit­i­cal­ly low and that the pro­cure­ment process could take sev­er­al months.

Alexan­der replied, “I will re­spond when it’s ap­pro­pri­ate to do so.”

In a sub­se­quent re­sponse, Alexan­der crit­i­cised the arrange­ments left in place un­der the for­mer Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment ad­min­is­tra­tion, say­ing the cur­rent Gov­ern­ment was work­ing to ad­dress the is­sue.

“Un­der the PNM ad­min­is­tra­tion, cer­tain im­mi­gra­tion ser­vices providers would have neck-tied the Im­mi­gra­tion De­part­ment and sys­tems in a noose, so they will de­cide when the Im­mi­gra­tion De­part­ment can or can­not breathe, as they sup­plied ser­vices at a cost when com­pared to the oth­er sup­pli­ers, was of no ben­e­fit to the coun­try and its peo­ple,” Alexan­der said.

He added, “This Gov­ern­ment will not al­low any­one to hold the coun­try to ran­som, as the back­up plans have al­ready been en­gaged.”

Alexan­der did not pro­vide de­tails on those back­up plans or in­di­cate when the coun­try could ex­pect ad­di­tion­al pass­port sup­plies.

The un­cer­tain­ty is al­ready caus­ing con­cern among some cit­i­zens seek­ing to re­new their pass­ports.

At the Ch­agua­nas Im­mi­gra­tion Di­vi­sion of­fice yes­ter­day, one ap­pli­cant, who asked not to be iden­ti­fied, said the pos­si­bil­i­ty of a short­age was wor­ry­ing be­cause he al­ready had up­com­ing trav­el plans.

“Yes, it is con­cern­ing for me be­cause I need to trav­el next month as soon as pos­si­ble,” he said.

The man said he be­lieved au­thor­i­ties should con­sid­er tem­po­rary mea­sures if the short­age wors­ens.

“Do it like we used to do be­fore. Once your pass­port has pages, give an ex­ten­sion,” he sug­gest­ed.

He said de­lays could af­fect more than just va­ca­tion trav­el, not­ing that some cit­i­zens de­pend on pass­ports for ur­gent rea­sons.

“A lot of peo­ple need to trav­el for health-wise and al­so for uni­ver­si­ty pur­pos­es,” he said.

Asked whether he was con­fi­dent the is­sue would be re­solved quick­ly, he re­spond­ed, “With this Gov­ern­ment, no.”

An­oth­er ap­pli­cant, Rakesh See­lochan, said he was un­aware of any po­ten­tial short­age when he sub­mit­ted pass­port ap­pli­ca­tions.

“No, I was not aware, and we weren’t told of this when we did the ap­pli­ca­tion,” See­lochan said.

“So, I guess we’re as­sum­ing that we will re­ceive the phys­i­cal book­let for these two pass­ports.”

See­lochan said phys­i­cal pass­ports re­main im­por­tant, par­tic­u­lar­ly for peo­ple who trav­el fre­quent­ly.

“Usu­al­ly, I trav­el for work, they ask to usu­al­ly see a phys­i­cal pass­port. So, we would pre­fer the phys­i­cal pass­port if you have this op­tion,” he said.

He said while he was not fa­mil­iar with the back­ground of the pro­cure­ment is­sues, any tran­si­tion to a new pass­port sys­tem should have been prop­er­ly planned.

“If they’re look­ing to move from phys­i­cal to e, they should have put things in place ide­al­ly be­fore you make this tran­si­tion,” he said.

Peo­ple fa­mil­iar with the in­dus­try ex­plained the pub­lic may as­sume pass­port pro­duc­tion is sim­ply a mat­ter of print­ing ad­di­tion­al books, but the process is ac­tu­al­ly sig­nif­i­cant­ly more com­plex.

Guardian Me­dia un­der­stands that one of the biggest chal­lenges is the long lead time re­quired to ob­tain the raw ma­te­ri­als used to man­u­fac­ture pass­port book­lets.

The pa­per used in pass­ports is not or­di­nary pa­per. It is a spe­cialised se­cu­ri­ty ma­te­r­i­al that must be sourced and pre­pared specif­i­cal­ly for each coun­try.

In T&T’s case, the pass­port con­tains sev­er­al unique se­cu­ri­ty el­e­ments, in­clud­ing fea­tures em­bed­ded in­to the pages dur­ing man­u­fac­tur­ing.

For ex­am­ple, the na­tion­al wa­ter­mark is not sim­ply print­ed on­to the pa­per af­ter pro­duc­tion. It is in­cor­po­rat­ed in­to the ma­te­r­i­al it­self dur­ing the man­u­fac­tur­ing process, mak­ing it far more dif­fi­cult to repli­cate.

This means sup­pli­ers must source the spe­cialised pa­per, in­cor­po­rate coun­try-spe­cif­ic se­cu­ri­ty fea­tures, pro­duce the book­lets, con­duct qual­i­ty checks and then ship them be­fore they can be used lo­cal­ly.

On­ly af­ter the blank book­lets ar­rive in T&T are they per­son­alised by the Im­mi­gra­tion Di­vi­sion with the hold­er’s pho­to­graph and in­for­ma­tion.

Sources ex­plained that pass­port sup­pli­ers usu­al­ly plan well in ad­vance, stor­ing the nec­es­sary ma­te­ri­als and pro­duc­ing ship­ments based on sched­uled de­mand.

They said his­tor­i­cal­ly, they can­not re­mem­ber when the coun­try faced a short­age of this na­ture.