Passport processing time needs to improve

Jan 09, 2021 Letters

DEAR EDITOR,

Kaieteur News – I remember the good old days of completing a form at the Guyanese Consulate office in New York in the morning to either renew my passport or get a new passport and then return in the afternoon, the same day to collect it.
Soon after, again; pre-2016, I remember being told that I had to go to Guyana in person, to renew my passport. Confirmation of this policy with a follow-up call to the consulate was indeed a surprise. Imagine, that one had to travel all the way to Guyana, just to renew a passport. Attempting to understand the logic of that decision was too much to even contemplate.
However, I must say renewing my passport in Georgetown was an impressively professional and expeditious process.
The current process online (New York Consulate) states; completed applications are sent to Georgetown with a processing time of 4-6 weeks or 2-3 months. It is fair to ask, in the era of Zoom and Webex that has replaced person-to-person direct contacts, and e-signatures online for documents etc: (1) What part of this process is so unique that it has to be done in Georgetown?, (2) Even so, in this era of sophisticated online digitized systems, what information can’t be compiled/validated and incorporated online to be shared globally or is it that (3) Passports can’t be kept securely or accounted for outside of Guyana?
Shifting gears; recently the foreign minister suggested to Guyanese to come back home and invest, and not just send money. It is hard to justify how citizens from one of the least populous countries in the world, in the era of super fast, ultra sophisticated online systems, have to wait for 4-6 weeks/2-3 months to get a passport.
The international process needs to be streamlined, into a more efficient and realistic wait-time, to fit the times that we live in.

Chi Kansi