Six thousand machine-readable passports have been issued by the Immigration Department of the Guyana Police Force since they were introduced in August.
Chief Immigration Officer George Vyphius told Stabroek News that since the introduction of the new format documents, the department had also sold 30,000 forms and received 10,000 applications.
Vyphius said that from all indications they were on target to meet the 2015 deadline for the complete phasing out of the old passports. This was the result, he said, of a number of new systems implemented in the department after complaints about overcrowding at the Camp Street office.
According to the Chief Immigration Officer, immediately after the introduction of the new passports attention had been paid to factors which had contributed to the long queues, including persons not bringing all the required documents and not filling out the application forms in their entirety.
“At first persons would come here [Passport Office] as early as 5 in the morning and wait. We never told persons to come so early; they felt that if they did that then they would get through the process faster
