What is good for ‘peter must be good for paul’

Oct 23, 2009 Features / Columnists, Peeping Tom

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If you are a Guyanese living in New York and need a machine readable passport, you can simply go down to the Guyana Consulate and submit the necessary paperwork.
Your application will be processed at that location and the information forwarded to Guyana where a machine readable passport will be prepared and forwarded under tight security to the Consulate where you will uplift it.
This is good news for American-based Guyanese. The same system will apply for Guyanese in other countries where there is a Guyanese Consulate, High Commission or Embassy. These new arrangements now make it easier for overseas-based Guyanese to apply for either a new passport or for a renewal.
But what about the hundreds of Guyanese who live in Berbice and Essequibo?
Do they too not deserve to be able to apply to a facility near to where they live, have their applications processed and their travel documents delivered to them under the same secure system as is being put in place for foreign-based Guyanese?
Right now a Guyanese in Berbice, wishing to apply for a new machine readable passport, is forced to leave home as early as 4:00 in the morning and then hope that by the time he arrives in front of the Central Passport Office in Eve Leary that the line is not too long.
If he is lucky he still has to wait some two hours standing in either the morning sun or rain until the office opens for business at 8 am and then depending on the number to which he is assigned may have to wait another few hours for his to approach the wicket to have his application processed.
He will then be given a date to return. On that date he has to make the return journey, join another line, and wait to receive his completed passport.
All of this time wasting could be curtailed if the same attention that is being paid to facilitating the processing of passports to foreign-based Guyanese is also given to Guyanese who live outside of Georgetown.
When machine-readable passports were first introduced in Guyana, the authorities made it clear that people applying for these passports needed to do so at the Central Passport Office in Georgetown.
This was in the main due to the fact that a special electronic photograph needed to be taken and this had to be done at the Passport Office.
This has led to long lines every working day outside of the passport office and it is unfortunate that senior government officials have not been forced to join these lines for if they had to stand in line they would experience what the ordinary citizens, some of whom have to leave their homes as early as 3:00 am, have to endure each day.
In all fairness, the system is much improved than before. There is a waiting section, documents are pre checked and the building is air conditioned. Yet each day there is a long line outside of the passport office from early dawn.
The Guyanese now living overseas will not have to be joining any line. They will have their documents processed overseas. The main reason why they will now enjoy this facility is because within the next two years, no person would be able to travel in and out of a developed country without a machine-readable passport.
Thus there is now a tremendous demand for Guyanese living in foreign countries to have machine readable passports. And the government has moved swiftly to put measures in place to serve these foreign-based nationals.
They should do the same for locals. There is no reason why Canadian Bank Note in collaboration with the immigration authorities cannot establish two receiving and dispatching centres in Berbice and Essequibo where persons can go and submit their applications and have their photographs taken.
When this has been done, the applications can be forwarded to Georgetown and the passports prepared and then transmitted under security back to the regional centres where they will be distributed.
This will ensure that there is one central processing center but three distribution and receiving points in Guyana- the first in Georgetown; the second in Berbice and the third in Essequibo.
This will make it much easier for persons from outlying areas who would have to travel from early morning to come to the city to have their applications processed.
This may not necessarily reduce the lines since given the situation internationally within the next two years no one will be able to go to any foreign country without a machine readable passport.
But it will make ensure that locals feel that they are not being treated as second class citizens with foreign nationals being given preferences not afforded to them.
The Chief Immigration Officer is the Commissioner of Police. He is someone that I believe is sincere about making improvements in the work of the Guyana Police Force.
I am asking him to press the authorities to make it easier for persons living outside of the city to obtain their passports in the same way as is being done for those Guyanese living overseas.

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