You can now stop the last minute rush to Nyayo House and relax. For many Kenyans with the old generation passports, panic mode had already started checking in as the deadline for the new passport draws closer. Good news though, Deputy President William Ruto has today announced the government’s decision to postpone the initial deadline of August 31, 2019 to 2020 citing poor response to calls for replacement with new ones with electronic features.
The President was speaking in Rome, where he engaged with Kenyans living in Italy. The Kenyan community in Italy complained of the difficulties they are faced with while trying to change the critical travel document.
According to Ruto, the proposed 2019 date is not feasible after only 400,000 passport holders out of over 2.5 million Kenyans managed to switch their travel documents.
“The deadline is soon approaching and only a small fraction has managed to upgrade their passports to the new e-Passport. The backlog at the immigration will not allow us achieve this,” said Ruto.
In diaspora, only London in UK, Paris in France, Washington DC in USA, Pretoria in South Africa, Dubai in UAE and Berlin, Germany had been set to start receiving applications for the new passport.
A letter from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs dated November, 20, 2018 asked the Kenyan Missions and Consulates Abroad to prepare in terms of space, secure internet connections and two immigrations officers ahead of the commencement date set on January 14, next year, in the said countries.
This meant that Kenyans living outside these countries have to travel to acquire the documents a topic that drew a heated debate leading to the postponement of the initial plan. During the meeting, Kenyans in diaspora said that it would be impractical to leave their current engagements to travel to the above countries for the renewal of the passport arguing that most of them are students with tight budgets and programmes, others have challenges with documents of cross border travel while others are engaged with jobs.
Back home, Kenyans have had to endure long queues at the immigration offices as they sought to upgrade the travel deadline before the set deadline. The shift to E-passport was announced in August last year with immigration department asking Kenyans to apply for the newly launched e-Passport, which also serves as the East African Community passport, from September 1, 2017.
The new document will have electronic chip with the owner’s details that will make it faster for the department to process new passports and make renewals.
Last month, Head of Public Service, Joseph Kinyua ordered all government workers to acquire the e-Passports by March 1, 2019 failure to which they will not be cleared to travel Director of Immigration Gordon Kihalangwa.
Mr. Kinuthia noted that the department had a heavy backlog of about 18,000 old and recent applicants but assured Kenyans that they had upgraded their equipment to process at least 2000 passports a day, compared to the 800 previously.
Are you one of the few Kenyans that have managed to renew their passports?