Chester Sam­bra­no

Lead Ed­i­tor – News­gath­er­ing

chester.sam­bra­no@guardian.co.tt

Po­lit­i­cal Leader of the Pa­tri­ot­ic Front, Mick­ela Pan­day, has ac­cused the Gov­ern­ment of fail­ing cit­i­zens over con­cerns sur­round­ing the coun­try’s sup­ply of pass­port book­lets.

Pan­day said the re­port­ed short­age was not sim­ply an ad­min­is­tra­tive over­sight, but what she de­scribed as a fail­ure of gov­er­nance.

Her com­ments came as the Min­istry of Home­land Se­cu­ri­ty in­sist­ed that Trinidad and To­ba­go is not fac­ing a pass­port short­age and that suf­fi­cient sup­plies are avail­able to meet cur­rent de­mand.

Re­spond­ing to a Guardian Me­dia re­port rais­ing con­cerns about the coun­try’s pass­port in­ven­to­ry, Home­land Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter Roger Alexan­der said cit­i­zens could con­tin­ue to ap­ply for and re­ceive pass­ports as nor­mal.

“The min­istry wish­es to make it ab­solute­ly clear that Trinidad and To­ba­go is not run­ning out of ma­chine-read­able pass­ports, and cit­i­zens can con­tin­ue to ap­ply for and re­ceive pass­ports as nor­mal,” the min­istry said in a state­ment.

The min­istry said the Im­mi­gra­tion Di­vi­sion has been man­ag­ing pass­port sup­plies as the coun­try pre­pares to tran­si­tion to a new elec­tron­ic pass­port sys­tem.

Af­ter re­peat­ed re­quests from Guardian Me­dia for in­ven­to­ry fig­ures, the min­istry dis­closed that 50,000 ma­chine-read­able pass­port book­lets were re­ceived in Oc­to­ber 2025, fol­lowed by an­oth­er 12,000 in June 2026.

It said the Im­mi­gra­tion Di­vi­sion is­sues few­er than 6,000 pass­ports each month on av­er­age and that an­oth­er 48,000 book­lets are ex­pect­ed to ar­rive in Sep­tem­ber from the Cana­di­an Bank Note Com­pa­ny.

The min­istry added that, by the end of 2026, the Im­mi­gra­tion Di­vi­sion would have re­ceived a to­tal of 100,000 ma­chine-read­able pass­port book­lets, which it de­scribed as “more than suf­fi­cient in­ven­to­ry” to sup­port the tran­si­tion to the e-Pass­port sys­tem.

How­ev­er, the min­istry did not dis­close the cur­rent num­ber of pass­port book­lets re­main­ing in stock.

Mean­while, Pan­day ques­tioned the Gov­ern­ment’s han­dling of the is­sue, ar­gu­ing that pass­port pro­cure­ment is a pre­dictable re­spon­si­bil­i­ty that falls square­ly un­der its con­trol.

She al­so crit­i­cised the Gov­ern­ment’s re­cent fo­cus on diplo­mat­ic pass­ports, say­ing that while at­ten­tion had been placed on who should and should not re­ceive those doc­u­ments, or­di­nary cit­i­zens were now con­cerned about whether reg­u­lar pass­ports would be avail­able when need­ed.

The Pa­tri­ot­ic Front is call­ing on the Gov­ern­ment to ex­plain how the sit­u­a­tion de­vel­oped, iden­ti­fy who is ac­count­able and out­line the im­me­di­ate steps be­ing tak­en to en­sure pass­port ser­vices con­tin­ue with­out dis­rup­tion.

Some cit­i­zens have al­so raised con­cerns about de­lays in re­ceiv­ing pass­ports, with sev­er­al claim­ing on­line that they have been wait­ing months af­ter com­plet­ing the re­new­al process.

The Min­istry of Home­land Se­cu­ri­ty said the tran­si­tion to the e-Pass­port sys­tem re­mains on track, with the ex­pres­sion of in­ter­est process com­plet­ed and sub­mis­sions cur­rent­ly be­ing eval­u­at­ed.

The new sys­tem is ex­pect­ed to in­tro­duce on­line ap­pli­ca­tions and ap­point­ments, im­prove ef­fi­cien­cy, and in­cor­po­rate bio­met­ric tech­nol­o­gy through an em­bed­ded elec­tron­ic chip.