NASSAU, Bahamas -- Continuing its thrust to better serve the public, the Passport Office has implemented a number of new initiatives, particularly for the busy summer period.
Among the changes are the hiring of persons from the Government Work Program to handle the backlog of applicants, and beefing up security at the Thompson Boulevard office to better manage the anticipated heavy flow of applicants, said Undersecretary Donald Cash at the Passport Office, Ministry of Foreign Affairs.
“We hope that they will bring us back to the 14-day period of processing and producing the E-passport. They are very hardworking and I think we have seen some of the best from that program here,” Mr Cash said.
He also introduced a “ready to start strategy”, where persons will be served if they arrive at the Passport Office earlier than the normal 8:30 am opening time. And part of this strategy also requests that Bahamians bring in copies along with their original documents to speed up the processing procedure.
The Passport Office closes at 4:00 pm but there is an evening shift from 3:00 pm to 10:00 pm during which time persons from the Government Work Program were hired to deal with the backlog of applicants.
However, there are thousands of E-passports waiting to be picked up by Bahamians from the offices in New Providence and Grand Bahama, Mr Cash has confirmed.
The International Civil Aviation Organisation (ICAO), of which The Bahamas is a member, has mandated that by 2010, all countries must begin issuing Machine Readable Passports or E-passports.
There are approximately 170,000 passport holders and about 2,000 Certificate of Identify holders. And since the inception of the E-passport in December, 2007, an estimated 20,000 have been produced.
However, the Passport Office is no longer printing the manual passports, and the two-page Certificate of Identity document. Both are machine-readable booklets.
The Certificate of Identity is a black, 32-page booklet, issued for the purpose of providing the bearer with identity papers and is valid for travel to countries where applicable and re-entry into The Bahamas.
“It is without prejudice to and in no way affects the national status of the bearer,” the document states.
The modern passport is being upgraded from a simple paper document to a more secure one – with biometrics features, including facial characteristics, and fingerprinting. Each E-passport holder is required to have a National Insurance Number in order to facilitate the new passport.
Effective May, Bahamians renewing their passports are asked to bring in, along with the original documents for verification, copies, in order to speed up the process of producing the passport.
Additionally, the mobile unit has been touring the Family Islands, especially in the remote areas, processing applicants for their new passports.
A team will go into the Family Island communities, where there are insufficient applicants to set up a daily office, take the relevant information and enter the data into their laptops.
The Family Island administrators will advise those residents when the mobile units would be in their particular areas.
The mobile unit returns to New Providence and the data is uploaded into the main system at the Passport Office, the only station where all E-passports are produced.
Abaco and Grand Bahama have local passports offices, where residents are processed up to the final level of approval. They send the data to the main system where it is also retrieved and passports printed.
The goal is to eventually offer the services of the mobile unit to business community, Mr Cash said.
The Bahamas overseas missions in countries where Bahamians live are also online to process passports and transfer the data to the main Passport Office.