Shane Su­perville

Se­nior Re­porter

shane.su­perville@guardian.co.tt

Min­is­ter of Home­land Se­cu­ri­ty Roger Alexan­der says he ex­pects the new e-pass­port sys­tem to be brought on­line with­in a mat­ter of months, as he put for­ward a ten­ta­tive time­line of ear­ly 2027 for the sys­tem to be rolled out.

Speak­ing with re­porters at the launch of a bar­ber­ing pro­gramme at his El Do­ra­do Road, Tu­na­puna con­stituen­cy of­fice yes­ter­day, Alexan­der said while he could not com­mit to a spe­cif­ic time­line, he an­tic­i­pat­ed that the sys­tem should be ready for use by Jan­u­ary 1, 2027.

He said the e-pass­port sys­tem was im­por­tant to en­hance ef­fi­cien­cies with­in the Im­mi­gra­tion Di­vi­sion, while en­sur­ing a high­er de­gree of se­cu­ri­ty was ob­served.

Alexan­der was al­so in­sis­tent that there were cur­rent­ly enough ma­chine-read­able pass­port book­lets for the pub­lic, de­spite not be­ing able to quote the ex­act num­ber in stock as yes­ter­day.

He said, how­ev­er, that they would have enough un­til stock is re­plen­ished in Sep­tem­ber.

Alexan­der urged the pub­lic not to pan­ic, as there was no ur­gency or “rush” to re­new their pass­ports well be­fore their ex­pi­ra­tion date.

“If you’re mov­ing away from ma­chine-read­able pass­ports to e-pass­ports, there must come a time where there will be changes. I see peo­ple run­ning com­ing now and what would even­tu­al­ly hap­pen? They will still have to come to get the e-pass­ports. So that is what we are try­ing to do.

“We have reached a point in that ap­pli­ca­tion process, we have not com­plet­ed our mis­sion yet with the providers of the ma­chine-read­able pass­port, but as we wait, all will be well.”

Alexan­der al­so not­ed that once on­line, the sys­tem would re­move the need for ap­pli­cants to make in-per­son ap­point­ments at the Im­mi­gra­tion Di­vi­sions for re­newals or any oth­er trans­ac­tion.

“You won’t have to go to an of­fice, you can down­load, up­load and all your doc­u­ments can be scanned and checked ... it makes the process sim­pler.”

Re­spond­ing to con­cerns from some peo­ple who com­plained that they were turned away from the Im­mi­gra­tion Of­fice on Rich­mond Street, Port-of-Spain, on Fri­day, de­spite ar­riv­ing ear­ly for trans­ac­tions, he said that this may be due to con­flicts in sched­ul­ing and not nec­es­sar­i­ly a short­age of pass­ports. He urged peo­ple with­out ap­point­ments to make use of on­line por­tals for in­for­ma­tion and ap­pli­ca­tions where nec­es­sary.