Kithure Kindiki, the interior cabinet secretary, has pledged to eliminate the backlog of more than 40,000 unprocessed passports within ten days.
The remarks were delivered by Prof. Kindiki on Friday at Nyayo House during a meeting with senior immigration department officials.
The purpose of the meeting was to assess the application of operational and policy improvements to address the issue of the slow passport processing.
“The 10-day countdown to clear the historical backlog of pending 40,000 plus passport applications is on. Deploying 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,” Prof Kindiki said.
Still giving an assessment of the situation at Nyayo House, Prof Kindiki tweeted that the queues are now shorter and the movement was faster.
“The tremendous improvement is a result of operational reforms initiated in the last three weeks. Immigration officers are working round the clock to clear the backlog and eventually ensure all future applications are processed without delay,” he said.
Prof. Kindiki said last week that there were 58,000 pending passport applications. The Department of Immigration and Citizen Services has been actively processing about 5,000 passports per day to address this problem.
The CS also provided an update on upcoming initiatives to speed up passport issuing.
In particular, efforts are being made to shorten the typical issue time to just 7 days. Additionally, the objective of a future effort is to reduce this processing time to an amazing 3 days.
There are plans to speed up passport services in case of an emergency, ensuring that people can have their passports in just 24 hours when critical conditions arise.