Kenyans looking to obtain passports will have to wait longer after a system failure at Nyayo House, Nairobi, affected normal application, receipt, and collection services, marking another painful moment for those seeking to travel.
The Immigration Department on Tuesday acknowledged the disruption, which would affect thousands of Kenyans, saying those affected would be given alternative dates as soon as possible.
The downtime is expected to increase the passport backlog from the current more than 700,000 to nearly one million, insiders said, and halt the processing of 500,000 applications.
This is even after the government received more than 100,000 passport printing booklets comprising 92,400, for 50 pages (B-series) and 20,300, for 66 pages (C- C-series) to ease delays witnessed in the issuance of the critical travelling document.
“We regret to inform our clients that we are currently experiencing a downtime that has affected our normal passport application receiving and collection services.
“Our engineers are working to resolve the issue and ensure the resumption of normal services as soon as possible. We apologise for the inconvenience caused,” it said on its social media pages.
The collapse of the immigration system comes seven days after the government announced that it had purchased two new passport printing machines and facilitated the acquisition of adequate passport printing equipment, a move aimed at easing the processing of travel documents and ending long-standing delays in their issuance.
The new printers, according to the government, would help clear the passport backlog and speed up the processing of the travel document.
“The two new printers at Nyayo House are expected to produce about 600 passports per hour, in line with the Ministry of Home Affairs’ target of doubling the number of passports issued from 533,000 in 2023 to at least one million in 2024,” said Kithure Kindiki, Cabinet secretary for Interior.
The latest development, which comes just a day before the new changes to passport processing are due to come into effect, is a setback to an ambitious plan to ensure that passport production takes 21 days, with the period expected to be reduced to seven days from August 1.
Last week, Prof Kindiki directed the Directorate of Immigration to embark on a Rapid Results Initiative to expedite the collection of passports and publish the names of applicants and designated collection points by this week.
The Directorate of Immigration has a daily demand of 5,000 passport applications and with the commissioning of the two new printers, it will be able to produce about 300 passports per hour.
