Jesse Ramdeo

Se­nior Re­porter

jesse.ramdeo@cnc3.co.tt

Home­land Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter Roger Alexan­der says the pro­cure­ment process for Trinidad and To­ba­go’s tran­si­tion to an elec­tron­ic pass­port sys­tem has be­gun, but he was un­able to pro­vide key de­tails about the project, in­clud­ing its cost, im­ple­men­ta­tion time­line and the num­ber of com­pa­nies in­volved in the ten­der­ing process.

The up­date came dur­ing yes­ter­day’s Stand­ing Fi­nance Com­mit­tee ex­am­i­na­tion of the Min­istry of Home­land Se­cu­ri­ty’s al­lo­ca­tions in the 2027 na­tion­al bud­get, where Op­po­si­tion MPs ques­tioned whether the pro­posed up­grade would be com­plet­ed with­in the time­line pre­vi­ous­ly out­lined by the min­is­ter.

Dur­ing the ex­change, Port-of-Spain North/St Ann’s West MP Stu­art Young ques­tioned the ab­sence of fund­ing for the up­grade of the ex­ist­ing ma­chine-read­able pass­port sys­tem to an e-pass­port sys­tem.

Young not­ed that while an es­ti­mate of $3 mil­lion had been pro­vid­ed for the project, the re­vised es­ti­mate for 2026 was ze­ro, with no al­lo­ca­tion iden­ti­fied for 2027.

He asked whether the Gov­ern­ment had aban­doned the planned up­grade.

“Pro­cure­ment has start­ed,” Alexan­der re­spond­ed, adding that an arrange­ment had not yet been fi­nalised and the cost of the project re­mained un­known.

Young ques­tioned how the Gov­ern­ment in­tend­ed to fi­nance the ini­tia­tive, giv­en the ab­sence of a spe­cif­ic al­lo­ca­tion in the bud­get.

“You have ab­solute­ly no mon­ey there. So, I mean, if pro­cure­ment is com­plet­ed, how are you go­ing to pay for these pass­ports?” Young asked, not­ing that the Gov­ern­ment had com­mit­ted to im­ple­ment­ing the e-pass­port sys­tem dur­ing the pre­vi­ous bud­get cy­cle.

Alexan­der said fund­ing would be placed un­der the rel­e­vant line item once the pro­cure­ment process was com­plet­ed.

How­ev­er, Young point­ed out that ad­di­tion­al fund­ing would have to be in­tro­duced through the bud­getary process or the mid-year bud­get re­view.

Alexan­der agreed, in­di­cat­ing that the Gov­ern­ment would have to re­turn to the mat­ter once the pro­cure­ment arrange­ments were fi­nalised.

Young sub­se­quent­ly sought con­fir­ma­tion that the up­grade was ex­pect­ed to take place dur­ing the cur­rent fis­cal year, sub­ject to the com­ple­tion of pro­cure­ment.

Alexan­der con­firmed that this was the in­ten­tion.

But when ques­tioned about the num­ber of com­pa­nies in­vit­ed to ten­der, the min­is­ter de­clined to pro­vide a fig­ure.

The ques­tion­ing then turned to the tech­ni­cal de­tails of the pro­posed up­grade.

Diego Mar­tin North/East MP Colm Im­bert asked Alexan­der to ex­plain the dif­fer­ence be­tween a ma­chine-read­able pass­port and an e-pass­port.

The min­is­ter de­scribed the e-pass­port as an ad­vance­ment in mod­erni­sa­tion and tech­nol­o­gy, with en­hanced ca­pa­bil­i­ties in­tend­ed to im­prove se­cu­ri­ty and fa­cil­i­tate the iden­ti­fi­ca­tion of trav­ellers be­fore ar­rival.

When Im­bert asked whether the e-pass­port in­clud­ed a mi­crochip, Alexan­der con­firmed that it did, but said he did not want to dis­close all the in­for­ma­tion.

Im­bert al­so asked how many ex­ist­ing pass­ports the Gov­ern­ment in­tend­ed to con­vert to the new sys­tem.

“We in­tend to change all,” Alexan­der said, ex­plain­ing that the tran­si­tion would take place in phas­es.

How­ev­er, he could not say how long the process would take, not­ing that the pro­cure­ment ex­er­cise had not been com­plet­ed and that arrange­ments would have to be made with the suc­cess­ful provider.

Alexan­der said agree­ments would de­ter­mine the quan­ti­ties of pass­ports to be pro­duced and de­liv­ered over spe­cif­ic pe­ri­ods.

The un­cer­tain­ty comes months af­ter Alexan­der in­di­cat­ed that the new e-pass­port sys­tem was ex­pect­ed to be rolled out in ear­ly 2027.

In Ju­ly, the min­is­ter said he an­tic­i­pat­ed the sys­tem would come on­line with­in a mat­ter of months, de­scrib­ing the up­grade as im­por­tant to im­prov­ing ef­fi­cien­cy with­in the Im­mi­gra­tion Di­vi­sion while strength­en­ing se­cu­ri­ty.

The lat­est up­date, how­ev­er, sug­gests that the project’s im­ple­men­ta­tion sched­ule re­mains de­pen­dent on the com­ple­tion of pro­cure­ment, the fi­nal­i­sa­tion of con­trac­tu­al arrange­ments and the iden­ti­fi­ca­tion of fund­ing.