Collect your passports, Kenyans told

More than 10,000 passports which are yet to be collected by their applicants at the Eldoret Immigration regional office risk being disposed of in the next three weeks.

Maurice Anyanda, the deputy director, Immigration department in charge of North Rift and Western region, asked owners of the passports to collect the documents without further delays.

Two weeks ago, Interior Cabinet Secretary Kithure Kindiki, while issuing a directive for the issuance and delivery of passports during the launch of Rapid Result Initiative (RRI), warned that passports must be collected within 30 days of issuance, failure to which they will be disposed of.

“Those that will not collect as scheduled after the expiry of the notice will be treated as uncollected documents and we will dispose of them,” said Kindiki

The Cabinet Secretary warned that applicants whose passports would be disposed of would also be required to reapply and pay an undisclosed fine.

Uncollected passports

Currently the Eldoret regional office, which is the second with the huge number of uncollected passports after Nairobi, has more than 10,000 travel documents awaiting collections by their applicants.

“We have been working day and night after our CS launched RRI, as a regional office as of now we have over 10,000 passports which are yet to be collected,” said Anyanda.

The regional boss said his officers have been working day and night to speed up issuance of the documents in tandem with a directive from the CS.

While addressing new applicants who had gathered at the Eldoret office yesterday, Anyanda told the applicants to visit the office and collect the passports so that they use them for the intended purpose.
He said that the Eldoret regional office serves huge areas that include Trans Nzoia, Nandi, Elgeyo Marakwet, Turkana, West Pokot Uasin Gishu and Baringo counties.

“Currently we have a huge number of uncollected passports. My officers have been forced to work in shifts to reduce the backlog and it will be more encouraging and prudent for applicants to come for their passports after application,” said Anyanda.

Three weeks ago, the ministry of interior announced that there are more than 87,000 passports yet to be collected countrywide.

By then the CS revealed that 87,574 passports had been produced by last month and were ready for collection, with the majority being at Nyayo House.

According to statistics from the department Nairobi is leading with more than 40,000 uncollected passports.