Georgetown: The Home Affairs Ministry announced that it was scrapping the policy for new applicants for passports to have new Birth Certificates following intense pressure from members of the public.
The Ministry; however, said that because of the need to do extensive background checks on applicants, the usual five-day processing time might be extended.
In a release, the Ministry said with the introduction of the machine-readable passport system, there was a requirement by the Ministry that the Guyana Police Force would implement an arrangement where members of the public applying for passports for the first time would present to the Immigration Department birth certificates that were issued, not more than six months prior to the date of the application.
The intention was to guarantee the integrity of the newly-implemented machine-readable passport system. Unfortunately, this arrangement was not implemented by the Guyana Police Force, as required by the Home Affairs Ministry.
The Ministry added that cognisant of the concerns of members of the public, the Guyana Police Force has reviewed the entire system pertaining to the issuance of passports and has now put in place a system to address this matter.
Persons applying for passports are asked to submit the following: passport application form; Birth Certificate; one passport-size photograph and a fee of $4000.
In relation to lost/damaged passport, the processing fee is $15,000 and additional conditionalities are required to be satisfied to facilitate issuance.
The release stated that the Guyana Police Force through its Immigration Department will make all reasonable efforts to expedite the processing of the applications, but the five-day processing time guaranteed by the Force is not likely to be honoured because of the need for a more robust verification process to accompany the production of the travel document.
You must be logged in to post a comment.