Long wait at Passport Office

May 23, 2008 Letters

Dear Editor,
The process for an application for a passport at the Passport Office in Georgetown is a very long and tedious process.

About two weeks ago I had to accompany a member of my church to identify that person to the Immigration officer in charge because the person did not have a national identification card.
We arrived at the Passport Office at 7am. I had to join a very long line with the individual I had accompanied to get our documents verified by an Immigration officer that took over one hour. We were then asked to sit on chairs in another long line in chair formation.

Another Immigration officer then picked out about eight persons in the ‘chair line’ to go over to the Passport Office building that is now under repairs. Those persons have to join another line to apply for their new passports. I note with interest that people who travel from as far as Berbice, Linden, Essequibo etc. are told to return the next day because numbers were already given out; these are people who arrived between 8 to 8:30 am.

After spending all that money to travel to Georgetown for a passport they were turned down by a rude Immigration officer. It’s very ridiculous for our Guyanese people living in ten regions to travel to Georgetown for a passport, when that same passport could have been given at an Immigration office in their region. When I was living in Berbice I obtained my passport at New Amsterdam. Why all this wait and trouble for a passport?

I waited in my ‘chair line’ up to 2pm then I was asked to go with the person I was identifying into the office building. We were taken into another department in a ‘bench line’. We waited there for a while then we went to a female officer, having joined a line, to pay $4000 dollars for the passport. When that was finished we were asked to go to another booth in another ‘bench line’ .We waited there as the line moved slowly, like a snail, to get our documents verified again, then moved to another booth to get the person’s photograph taken. That process took another two hours. By then those who would have waited all day in the ‘bench line’ outside were asked to return to the next day. I left the Immigration office around 4:20pm.

Why is it from the very inception that the officer who verified our documents couldn’t have received our application fees, issued a receipt and get applicants’ pictures taken at the same time by an assisting officer? Why do we have to waste the whole day just to apply for a simple passport? Why people travelling from Berbice and other parts of the country have to be running up and down for a passport the whole week, wasting thousands of dollars in travelling expenses? Why this new passport system cannot be decentralised to every region in Guyana? These are questions the Ministry of Home Affairs needs to answer to the Guyanese public.

In a day and age where technology is very high, a passport should be issued quite easily. In some countries applicants applying for a passport can do so online. This new system of machine readable passports is not quite different from the old system we had in place. What is different is everything is in a computer and your picture is taken by a digital camera. By not having this system in place in every region in Guyana tells me clearly that Immigration officers lack a proper education to deal with these simple issues. In all my travels, Guyana is the only country I see so many long lines and waiting for simple issues to be addressed.

It’s time our existing administration wake up from their slumber and get better systems in place to address simple issues like a passport .

Some people have applied over one year for a TIN number and cannot get it until today. I am still waiting for my TIN certificate in the mail. Why so much incompetence in a country with less than one million people? It’s because we lack vision to rule and administrate.

It’s about time our President replaces some of our incompetent officials and replace them with people who are more qualified and competent to do the job.

As we are about to celebrate another independence, we should ask ourselves what have we achieved as a nation after 42 years of struggling.

The answer is simple; we have achieved nothing to compete with the Caribbean and the wider world. If we cannot deal with a simple passport application in minutes, it’s not possible for us to govern a very strong nation in years to come. We can only measure our successes from what we have achieved. I hope the relevant authorities address these issues I have raised in this letter.
Rev. Gideon Cecil

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