Govt issues EOI for e-passport system amid public outrage

SHAL­IZA HAS­SANALI

Se­nior Re­porter

Shal­iza.has­[email protected]

One day af­ter the Sun­day Guardian pub­lished an ar­ti­cle stat­ing that book­ing an e-ap­point­ment for a pass­port on the Min­istry of Home­land Se­cu­ri­ty web­site takes as long as six months, the min­istry is­sued an ex­pres­sion of in­ter­est (EOI) for suit­ably qual­i­fied en­ti­ties to up­grade its pass­port por­tal.

Yes­ter­day, the min­istry post­ed on its web­site an EOI to up­grade its ma­chine-read­able pass­port (MRP) to an elec­tron­ic pass­port (E-pass­port) for the Im­mi­gra­tion Di­vi­sion. Dead­line for sub­mis­sion of the EOI is June 19.

The min­istry stat­ed the EOI in­tends to iden­ti­fy pri­vate and pub­lic sec­tor en­ti­ties that would be in­ter­est­ed in pro­vid­ing ser­vice to “up­grade the pass­port is­su­ing and con­trol sys­tem from MRP to the E-pass­port is­su­ing and con­trol sys­tem.”

One of the scope overviews is that the en­ti­ty must be able to de­vel­op and com­mis­sion a ful­ly func­tion­al on­line ap­pli­ca­tion for e-pass­ports, with on­line pay­ment pro­cess­ing.

Ap­pli­cants cur­rent­ly pay for their pass­ports at the Im­mi­gra­tion Di­vi­sion’s five func­tion­al of­fices us­ing their deb­it or cred­it cards. Cash is al­so ac­cept­ed at some of the Dis­trict Rev­enue of­fices.

An­oth­er scope is that the en­ti­ty has to de­vel­op 750,000 e-pass­port book­lets com­pli­ant with the In­ter­na­tion­al Civ­il Avi­a­tion Or­gan­i­sa­tion (ICAO) Doc 9303, lat­est ma­chine-read­able trav­el doc­u­ments and main­te­nance and sup­port ser­vices for the e-pass­port Is­su­ing and Con­trol Sys­tem (ePICS) for a pe­ri­od of five years.

The Sun­day Guardian, in its May 24 ar­ti­cle, stat­ed that for the first time since the 2023 launch of the e-ap­point­ment by the min­istry, cit­i­zens were ex­pe­ri­enc­ing un­prece­dent­ed de­lays in se­cur­ing pass­port ap­point­ments.

Book­ing an ap­point­ment on the on­line plat­form, which would have pro­vid­ed a date in mere weeks, has turned in­to months.

The ear­li­est ap­point­ment for a pass­port is in No­vem­ber, which is a six-month wait.

This de­lay sparked grow­ing frus­tra­tion and anger among cit­i­zens, some of whom have tak­en to so­cial me­dia to com­plain about the length of time they have had to wait, de­scrib­ing the sit­u­a­tion as out­ra­geous, un­ac­cept­able and ridicu­lous.

The out­rage came against the back­drop of re­cent claims made by Home­land Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter Roger Alexan­der that a cor­rup­tion rack­et has been un­cov­ered at the Im­mi­gra­tion Di­vi­sion, where mil­lions of dol­lars were al­leged­ly paid to im­mi­gra­tion of­fi­cials and em­ploy­ees over the years for cit­i­zen­ship pass­port ap­point­ments, res­i­den­cy per­mits and work per­mits.

In its no­tice, the min­istry promised to care­ful­ly re­view all sub­mis­sions to en­sure that en­ti­ties pos­sess the nec­es­sary re­sources, ex­per­tise and ex­pe­ri­ence to pro­vide this ser­vice.

It stat­ed that this new sys­tem must be in­ter­op­er­a­ble with all ex­ist­ing sys­tems, in­clu­sive of the In­te­grat­ed Bor­der Man­age­ment Sys­tem.

“In so do­ing, the T&T Im­mi­gra­tion Di­vi­sion will achieve com­pli­ance with the lat­est ICAO stan­dards in its op­er­a­tions, while im­prov­ing its ef­fi­cien­cy with the use of the lat­est tech­nol­o­gy and im­proved se­cu­ri­ty mech­a­nisms.”

The no­tice stat­ed that the sys­tem will be in­stalled at var­i­ous lo­ca­tions across T&T and may al­so in­clude ex­ter­nal con­sular sites.

The en­ti­ty will be re­quired to pro­vide all hard­ware and soft­ware, in­clu­sive of net­work con­nec­tiv­i­ty and se­cu­ri­ty el­e­ments re­quired for a ful­ly func­tion­al (ePICS), with fa­cial recog­ni­tion, back-end serv­er and con­nec­tiv­i­ty equip­ment and front-end user equip­ment.