Passport applicants complain of delays amid reported booklet shortage

KAY-MARIE FLETCH­ER

Se­nior Re­porter

kay-marie.fletch­er

Mem­bers of the pub­lic con­tin­ue to lament hav­ing to wait months for their pass­ports to be is­sued, as sources with­in the Im­mi­gra­tion Di­vi­sion claim that book­let stocks re­main crit­i­cal­ly low.

And with Christ­mas ap­proach­ing, con­cerns are grow­ing among fam­i­lies that the con­tin­ued lengthy de­lays will dis­rupt their over­seas trav­el plans.

The com­plaints come near­ly four months af­ter Home­land Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter Roger Alexan­der in­sist­ed there was no pass­port short­age and as­sured cit­i­zens that suf­fi­cient sup­plies were avail­able to meet de­mand.

At the time, the min­istry in­di­cat­ed that ap­prox­i­mate­ly 48,000 ad­di­tion­al pass­port book­lets were ex­pect­ed to ar­rive in Sep­tem­ber and Alexan­der as­sured cit­i­zens that the min­istry was care­ful­ly man­ag­ing pass­port sup­plies while prepar­ing to in­tro­duce a new elec­tron­ic pass­port sys­tem.

How­ev­er, when Guardian Me­dia reached out to Alexan­der for clar­i­ty on whether that ship­ment ar­rived, the cur­rent pass­port in­ven­to­ry and the con­tin­ued de­lays af­fect­ing ap­pli­cants, he did not re­spond up to press time.

Mean­while, for­mer pres­i­dent of the Copy­right Mu­sic Or­gan­i­sa­tion of Trinidad and To­ba­go (COTT) Cur­tis Jor­dan is among those af­fect­ed by the de­lays.

Jor­dan, who ap­plied for his child’s pass­port on Ju­ly 20, said he was ini­tial­ly told the doc­u­ment would be ready with­in 12 weeks.

How­ev­er, 15 weeks lat­er, he is still wait­ing.

Speak­ing to Guardian Me­dia via tele­phone yes­ter­day, Jor­dan ex­pressed con­cern that the con­tin­ued de­lay could af­fect his fam­i­ly’s over­seas trav­el plans.

Jor­dan ex­plained that his fam­i­ly be­gan the ap­pli­ca­tion process in Feb­ru­ary but could not se­cure an ap­point­ment un­til Ju­ly, five months lat­er.

Jor­dan said, “I would have ap­plied for my child be­cause my en­tire fam­i­ly has pass­ports and we need to get for our last child and we would have ap­plied on the 20th of Ju­ly and we were told that we would have to wait like 12 weeks or three months max.

“But then, now we are in the month of No­vem­ber, we are con­cerned be­cause it’s com­ing time clos­er for when we would like to use it and I think that it’s a lit­tle bit un­fair to think or to feel as though that the on­ly way that you can get your pass­port with­in a rea­son­able time is pay­ing for it.”

Ac­cord­ing to the Im­mi­gra­tion Di­vi­sion’s web­site, the stan­dard pro­cess­ing time for a pass­port is four weeks, while ex­pe­dit­ed pro­cess­ing takes be­tween three and sev­en busi­ness days at an ad­di­tion­al cost.

How­ev­er, Jor­dan said his ex­pe­ri­ence has been far from what is ad­ver­tised.

He said his frus­tra­tion prompt­ed him to share his ex­pe­ri­ence on so­cial me­dia, where he re­ceived nu­mer­ous re­spons­es from peo­ple claim­ing they were fac­ing sim­i­lar de­lays.

“I don’t nor­mal­ly post things like this on so­cial me­dia. That’s my per­son­al busi­ness.

“But it was so frus­trat­ing. I couldn’t be­lieve that we are now in­side of the month of No­vem­ber and we start­ed this process in Feb­ru­ary to just get a doc­u­ment like this.

“And I think the frus­tra­tion re­al­ly goes to the next lev­el know­ing that this is not how it is (done in) oth­er places in the world.”

He said sev­er­al peo­ple al­so con­tact­ed him pri­vate­ly, while oth­ers sug­gest­ed vis­it­ing Im­mi­gra­tion Di­vi­sion of­fices in dif­fer­ent parts of the coun­try in the hope of ob­tain­ing the doc­u­ment soon­er.

How­ev­er, Jor­dan ques­tioned why cit­i­zens should have to re­sort to such mea­sures.

He added, “A lot of peo­ple are go­ing through the same sit­u­a­tion, and I think that we need to do bet­ter… A sim­ple process as get­ting a sim­ple doc­u­ment should not have to wait a whole year to hap­pen.”

Guardian Me­dia al­so spoke with an­oth­er ap­pli­cant who said he on­ly re­ceived his pass­port last week af­ter wait­ing 17 weeks, more than four times the stan­dard pro­cess­ing pe­ri­od ad­ver­tised by the Im­mi­gra­tion Di­vi­sion.