Yesterday three members of the same family that travelled to Colombo from Badulla on Tuesday evening and stayed overnight, joined a lengthy queue to hand over the ‘documents’ which the Department of Immigration and Emigration requires to process their application, which had been made in early January. The group, who applied under the ‘normal’ passport application channel and not the ‘one day’ channel, were asked to check in with the Colombo office after ‘two or three months’ to ‘see’ if their passports were ready for collection. This is the state of affairs with issuance of passports, and it has been the status quo for months, with State mismanagement of the matter, largely during the previous administration causing a shortage of passports, and a backlog of applications to process. This matter requires urgent and serious attention from the Government as it inconveniences the tax-paying public, who are willing to pay for public services like the preparation of travel documents, yet have to languish in ques for days.

Despite much done by the current Government and the two previous Governments, ‘quick fix’ comments by tycoon minister’s who were appointed to the portfolio briefly, about expanding passport issuing offices to regional branches across the island and much hype about ‘digitalisation', the situation remains in chaos. In mid-2024, several officials at the Public Security Ministry came under scrutiny for allegedly violating the Government’s established tender procedure, causing a shortage in passports and a delay in supply, which triggered widespread public inconvenience due to long queues at the Department of Immigration and Emigration. Following much cross bench saber rattling between the Opposition and the then minister in charge, nothing really improved. The controversy is today before courts.

In October last year, the then Cabinet Media Spokesperson Minister Vijitha Herath said that a stock of new foreign passports, which will be received that month, would be distributed from them on. The Minister also stated that there is an injunction in the court regarding the e-passport, and that no tender will be called in relation to it. He added that he will pay attention to it after the court order is over. As the ordered stock of foreign passports is not the permanent solution to the crisis, the minister stated that as per a Cabinet decision made on 11 October, the Government will switch to providing normal passports and import more passports according to a tender procedure.

In early January of this year, an expert committee report on the passport crisis commissioned by the new Government had been submitted to Minister of Public Security and Parliamentary Affairs, Ananda Wijepala and was expected to be presented to the Cabinet last month. It was reported that based on its recommendations, changes to the current passport issuance process may be considered. In early January, 2,900 passports were issued daily, with plans to increase this number. The recommendations are finally being enacted in February. Let us hope that they will swiftly change the status quo.

Yesterday, during the Cabinet Press briefing it was revealed that the Government will push the Department of Immigration and Emigration to up their game and issue 4,000 passports per day, while the department was to be ‘monitored’ 24 hours. The last part of that statement begs the question if the department functioned unsupervised before? To help clear up the backlog and the large volume of requests received on a daily basis, the Cabinet of Ministers had approved the deployment of additional staff to accelerate the printing of passports. According to the recommendations, the procurement process has already commenced to supply 1,100,000 empty passports with the ‘P’ category chip from the supplier. Accordingly, a programme has been planned to issue 4,000 passports per day by monitoring the operations of the Department of Immigration and Emigration throughout 24 hours to eliminate the delay of issuing passports which prevails at present. The Cabinet has approved to supply the additional staff required for the purpose by engaging the officers who served in that department and retired on a contract basis with the concurrence of the Public Service Commission in addition to attaching the officers currently in the Government service with the consent of the Ministry of Public Administration.

While this may be a stop-gap measure, it will bring some relief for those who have been waiting for months for their passport. Or for a new one. However, the story should not end there, the Government must get to the root of the problem and implement structural and organisational reforms which makes it an effective and easy to access public service.