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The Passport Office

May 01, 2016 Features / Columnists, Peeping Tom

Over 1,000 passport applications in four days cannot be responsible for the long lines seen outside the Passport Office in recent days.  Two hundred and fifty applications per day are below par and cannot be held responsible for the long lines.
The passport office when it first introduced the machine readable passport was processing in excess of 300 passports per day. So now that it is processing an average of 250 per day, it should have been able to do so with less of the lines seen in recent times.
There was a rumour that the price of passports was going to be increased and this may have triggered the rush by citizens to get new passports or have old ones renewed. But that still cannot explain why there are so many people lining up for passports.
There has been confusion and overcrowding for passports for years now. Instead of improving the management of the services offered, what was done was to try to remove the image caused by the long lines outside of the Passport Office. The lines were simply moved indoors by opening the doors to the Passport Office at 7 am so that by the time of the 8 o’clock rush hour, the line would be inside.
The new government knew about this problem. They knew also that people were travelling from all around the country to come to the city to get their passports. They promised decentralization, but it is not clear how well that is working, because there has no reduction in the lines.
The government has had one year to fix this problem and it has not fixed it.
The government is now saying that decentralization will begin in Berbice. But that is not going to reduce the numbers. The population of Berbice (West and East) is about 150,000 persons. There are more persons than that living on the East Coast alone. There are another 100,000 persons living in West Demerara. It therefore makes more sense to decentralize first to the East Coast of Demerara and to West Demerara than to Berbice.
These are things which can be fixed in a matter of weeks through good project management. You do not need, immediately, the decentralization of processing, just collection, payment and delivery.
In the short term there are measures which can be taken to reduce the lines. Firstly, the bulk of people go to the Passport Office in the morning. If instead of an eight-hour work day, this was extended to a twelve-hour workday, it will help reduce the problem.
The systems at the Passport Office need fixing. A person has to line up to have the document checked and the fee paid. Then go and sit and wait to have their picture taken. This process can be consolidated. There should be cubicles handling twenty persons at a time, with all being manned simultaneously (not ten working and ten gone to lunch or tea break). At each cubicle the documents should be checked and the photographs taken immediately, after which the receipt should be issued at another wicket. The steps therefore would be reduced from three to two, and this will shorten the processing time.
A major problem with the Passport Office concerns renewals. There is no system of renewing any passport. Once five years have passed you must apply for a new passport. This is what is contributing to the large numbers of persons at the Passport Office.
There needs to be a simple system for persons renewing their passport. There should be no need for them to apply for a new passport. If you wish to charge the same fee of renewal, then do so. But make the system a simpler one than applying for a new passport.
Passport renewals should be handled in a separate building from applications for new passports. This will make things easier and allow for less confusion.
All that is required is for simple adjustments to make things work in Guyana. But Guyana is a country in which there is resistance to simple adjustments. And that is why things take so long to get done.

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