Kindiki chairs meeting on clearance of passport backlog

By Peter Ochieng

Cabinet Secretary (CS) for Interior Kithure Kindiki is a man determined to clear the passport application backlog at the Department of Immigration.

The department has its headquarters at Nyayo House, Nairobi, which the CS recently said was a 'crime scene' due to rampant cases of corruption and bribery associated with one applying for and receiving a passport.

The CS on Friday morning chaired a meeting to review changes put in place to deal with the backlog.

He said the 10-day countdown to clear over 40, 000 passport applications is well on course.

"The 10-day countdown to clear the historical backlog of pending 40,000 plus passport applications is on," he said.

"Deployment of day and night shifts to facilitate full capacity printing of passports, procurement of modern printing equipment, and recruitment of additional immigration officers will help us resolve the systemic challenges that have hampered service delivery."

Immigration and Citizen Services Principal Secretary Prof. Julius Bitok, and Immigration and Citizen Services Director General Evelyn Cheluget were among those in attendance.

"There is a lot of improvement. We are in a better place than where we were last week. The queues are shorter and the movement is faster but still, we have more to do and therefore today we have been strategising with the teams here because as I promised we must crack this problem," added CS Kindiki.

He said the game plan for now is to sort out the backlog before other issues are addressed.

"In 10 days from now, there will be no single backlog matter on passports. Between the time I was last here and now, we've had new challenges and we have seen how to address them so that we make sure that even new applications are processed in such a way that they don't create another backlog after we have cleared the current backlog."

"We will address the long-term issues once the backlog issue is addressed.  We have long-term issues on policy matters, production of passports, the application process and whether we will continue having people come here to queue for their documents or whether we are going to have other methods where citizens are treated in a more orderly manner without coming to queue here."

He stated that they have made arrangements for new equipment but they have not arrived.