00:00Why it is that it's taking almost 17 weeks for a person to receive a passport appointment.
00:09The question posed by opposition leader Plano P. Beckles during a media conference on Thursday to Homeland Security Minister Roger
00:16Alexander, who has given his response when contacted by TV6 News on Friday via telephone.
00:21When you are modernizing your system, obviously, there will be some form of delay. Hopefully, we are looking to fix
00:34that system, to have that system up and running in the New Year. We are one month away from all
00:40of this.
00:41All right. And if we realize that there's an issue in terms of how fast we can get these e
00:48-passports, then we will continue to bring the machine-readable passport. So it's a win-win situation.
00:56The opposition leader highlighted the delay in online appointments to get a passport, whether for a new one or a
01:02renewal.
01:02And I want to ask any member of the public, you can go online, as I'm speaking, and make an
01:11appointment for your passport, an application for the receipt of your passport.
01:20And you will get, at this point in time, the 27th of April, 2027.
01:29And that's when you receive, that's the appointment date.
01:31The Homelander Security Minister said it is about demand and supply, as the government moves from machine-readable passports to
01:39e-passports.
01:40There's a storm coming and the panic buying and all of that. It's the same thing that is happening with
01:46the passport at this time.
01:48Persons are panicking and applying for passports when they don't even require.
01:54So the amount of persons, sometimes you are applying for passports and your expiration date is more than a year,
02:02but you want a new passport just in case kind of thing, so they panic buying.
02:07So the amount of persons that are applying for passports at this time is more than the supply of passports.
02:19The opposition leader called on the Homelander Security Minister to provide an update regarding the situation with the supply of
02:26passports.
02:26The Ministry of Homeland Security issued a press release and the Minister told us that they received 50,000 machine
02:36-readable passports in October 2025.
02:38They again received 12,000 in 2026, June 2026, and they were due to receive 48,000 passports in September
02:502026.
02:52And at the end of the year, the total amount of passports that the Ministry of Homeland Security are likely
03:00to receive, or would be receiving, is 100,000 passports.
03:04Now, if that is the case, we need to ask the Minister, one, did you receive the 48,000 passports?
03:15TV6 used to find out from Minister Alexander how many e-passports the Ministry has.
03:20We are looking, it is something I wouldn't want to answer right away, because we are changing, we are looking
03:26at what we need, and the security features that we want to, when we send out, we're looking at what
03:32security features we want on the nation's passport.
03:36So we are not discussing that too much at this time.
03:39That is why I said before, modernisation is a hell of a thing. Some people understand, some people don't.
03:43Minister Alexander said there is also a plan for an improvement to the online appointment process.
03:48Jules Brown, TV6 News.
