The new Guyana passport will be introduced towards the end of this year or in early 2020 after the stock of existing documents has been exhausted, according to Citizenship Minister Winston Felix.
“We are going to be running with the old passports until they run out towards the end of the year…November or December and then after they have run out, the supply of the new passport should kick in late 2019 or early 2020, by which time we should have paid down the first installment,” Felix said when contacted on Thursday.
Felix stressed that “you can’t talk in the budget today and the passport come tomorrow.”
Speaking on behalf of Felix during the consideration of the budget estimates, Minister of Public Affairs Dawn Hastings-Williams had said that money had been set aside for the new passport, which will be printed and supplied by Canadian Bank Note.
In the Citizenship Department’s budget, $238 million has been allocated for the purchase of 200,000 of the new passports and 150,000 birth certificates.
During the budget debate, Felix had said that the new passports, which are larger, will have a ten-year lifespan. They will carry a price of $10,000.
Felix also said the money allocated in the budget for the procurement of the new travel document was needed to either pay down an installment to or pay off Canadian Bank Note. “I had to start then [with the 2019 budget] because the supply of the old passports would end later this year, so I [couldn’t] wait ’til it end to start talking new passports. I gotta start before so by the time it is finished, all the administrative arrangements would be in place for the people to supply the new passports,” he said.
With regards to the introduction of birth certificates with additional security features, he said “right now we are doing that. It’s here.”
Felix said, too, that the much anticipated e-passports will be coming with the new passports.
Previously, he had explained the modern machine readable passport contains an electronic chip, which will provide enhanced security and will hold the same information that is printed on the bio-page. He had said that this type of passport will also contain a biometric identifier, such as a digital photograph of the passport holder. The passport, given the new features, would be more difficult to duplicate and alter. “The extra layer of security has been known to inspire greater confidence in and acceptance of a country’s travel document,” he had told the National Assembly before noting that Guyana would join its sister Caribbean countries with the introduction of the passport.
Felix told Stabroek News that the online processing of passport applications is still being addressed. He reiterated that there is no medium for payments to be made as yet. “We are searching for a credible institution that can do online payment because once you gone online, payment got to be online,” he said.
He said too that the Department is looking to open the new passport offices at Linden and New Amsterdam at the same time. At the moment, connecting power and installing internet facilities are being looked at as well as the procurement of furniture and security for the offices.
