Passport Shortage Explained; More Books on the Way
On the phone: Dr. Gilroy Middleton
The availability of passports has also been an issue at the Immigration Department. C.E.O. Middleton explained how the situation will be resolved in the days ahead, before clarifying what created the shortage in the first place.
On the phone: Dr. Gilroy Middleton, C.E.O., Ministry of Immigration
“Okay, in terms of the availability of the passport, I’ll speak of the solution and then I’ll go back to the issue. So the solution is in that seven working days, the eighteenth of April, 2023, Canadian Banknote will be shipping a large number of blank books for us which will reach here within thirteen working days, on or about the twenty-sixth of April. So we have three more weeks to manage, in terms of the passports, hence we are currently only printing emergency passports which would be people who need a passport for medical reasons, we also consider educational reasons and emergency. We have Belizeans studying abroad that literally come home for a passport, that they need to get a foreign visa and also Belizeans visiting obtaining a new e-passport, we’d process it for them, and finally, people that need to travel for business or for government. Those are considered in terms of the emergencies. We have an email on our website that notes this and we’re trying to assist as many people as we can. So in simple essence, in thirteen working days we will be out of the issue in terms of passport books and we expect this to be the last time we have this issue. A major contributor to this issue is [one] during COVID, people weren’t traveling, during COVID people’s passports lapsed. [Two] as the honorable Eamon Courtenay noted in the Senate and in the news media that the actual passport price would not be implemented in 2022 and people realized that the passport, they’re getting it at a lower fee, some people refer to it as a social fee. So a lot of people have been coming in for the passport, hence there’s a high demand in reference to the normal supply has led to issues. We had informed Canadian Banknotes from December when we reviewed the numbers, however, it had taken until this shipment of April 18th, 2023 that will arrive somewhere around the twenty-fifth of April to address in terms of the numbers and high demand for this new e-passport.”
