Interior and National adminstration CS Announces RRI On Passports Collection

Embu,

Wednesday, September 13, 2023

KNA by Samuel Waititu

Interior and National administration Cabinet Secretary (CS) Kithure Kindiki on Tuesday made an impromptu visit to the Eastern Regional Immigration Offices in Embu Town on a fact-finding mission.

While expressing satisfaction with service delivery at the offices, Prof Kindiki said he also wanted to check how far the reforms instituted to streamline the issuance of passports had cascaded to the regional offices.

“You can clean up the headquarters but still have bottlenecks in the regional offices and that is why I decided to make the surprise visit here,” he said.

He at the same time announced plans to initiate a nationwide Rapid Results Initiative (RRI) on collection of passports on Wednesday next week.

The CS said in pursuit of enhancing service delivery, they had also discovered that there were quite a number of uncollected passports in almost all the offices across the country.

He said the Embu office alone was holding approximately six thousand uncollected passports while Nairobi was holding close to 30, 0000.

Kindiki said they were going to make it mandatory for all those who had applied for passports to collect them within the period to be announced on Wednesday.

“We will even publish those passport numbers and the names of the applicants telling them they must come and collect them,” he said, adding that more measures will be announced for those who will decline.

He continued, “you cannot put us under pressure as immigration officers to give you a passport then when it is printed you don’t come for it.”

The CS added that for those who will ultimately fail to collect theirs, the law will be applied in terms of finding a way of disposing them.

At the same time, Kindiki said they will be increasing the number of staff at the Embu offices from 20 to 30 to ease the workload.

He also said they will make a face lift of the facility to make it more conducive to work.

“Our officers are working in a very congested and constrained environment and we have undertaken to improve the facility,” he said.

Courtesy; KNA