The Im­mi­gra­tion Di­vi­sion of­fice in Port-of-Spain has been closed in­def­i­nite­ly af­ter staff va­cat­ed the premis­es due to health and safe­ty con­cerns.The of­fice which had been op­er­at­ing for half-day for the last week was or­dered shut by the Min­istry of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty on Wednes­day.Peo­ple seek­ing new ma­chine read­able pass­ports are be­ing ad­vised to vis­it oth­er branch­es at San­gre Grande, Ch­agua­nas, San Fer­nan­do, Pt Fortin and To­ba­go be­tween the hours of 7 am and 3 pm, a state­ment from the Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Min­istry said.

On May 14, Pub­lic Ser­vice As­so­ci­a­tion pres­i­dent Wat­son Duke deemed the of­fice un­safe and ad­vised work­ers to sign the reg­is­ter and leave the premis­es.While for some the shut­down has caused un­ex­pect­ed stress, for oth­ers the process re­mains as chal­leng­ing as it was be­fore the of­fice was closed. A Venezue­lan woman, who has been liv­ing in Trinidad for 20 years and has been try­ing ob­tain cit­i­zen­ship since 2001, was neu­tral about the shut­down.Well be­fore the shut­down, she said she ex­pe­ri­enced great dif­fi­cul­ty get­ting her ap­pli­ca­tion processed.She says her file is just too thick and that the Im­mi­gra­tion of­fice just does not have the per­son­nel to deal with it."Pa­pers they ask­ing me for, pa­pers I have been pro­vid­ing and still they say 'noth­ing is hap­pen­ing to you. It's just that we don't have enough per­son­nel to do X, Y and Z.' How long you ex­pect­ing to keep me wait­ing like this?" she asked.

Duke was con­fi­dent the mat­ter would be re­solved by the end of next month. Speak­ing by tele­phone on Mon­day, he said the clo­sure of the of­fice was be­ing tak­en quite se­ri­ous­ly and that they had al­ready be­gun to re­lo­cate of­fices."We have en­tered in­to a good faith re­la­tion­ship. We be­lieve that they will act in good faith. Fail­ure to do so will re­sult in the PSA and its mem­bers tak­ing ap­pro­pri­ate ac­tion," Duke warned.