SHAL­IZA HAS­SANALI

Se­nior In­ves­tiga­tive Re­porter

shal­iza.has­sanali@guardian.co.tt

Last Tues­day, the ear­li­est date for a pass­port ap­point­ment on the Min­istry of Home­land Se­cu­ri­ty’s e-ap­point­ment web­site for the Port-of-Spain, San­gre Grande and Ch­agua­nas Im­mi­gra­tion Di­vi­sion of­fices was No­vem­ber 24.

Ap­point­ment slots were not avail­able in De­cem­ber.

From sched­ul­ing an ap­point­ment on the por­tal to ac­tu­al­ly hav­ing a pass­port in hand, the en­tire process can take as long as nine months.

The e-ap­point­ment sys­tem, launched in De­cem­ber 2023, was a col­lab­o­ra­tive ef­fort of the T&T Im­mi­gra­tion Di­vi­sion, the then Min­istry of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty, the Na­tion­al In­for­ma­tion and Com­mu­ni­ca­tion Tech­nol­o­gy Com­pa­ny Ltd (iGovTT) and the Min­istry of Dig­i­tal Trans­for­ma­tion.

The re­cent furore over the de­lay in pass­port ap­point­ments led to a no­tice post­ed on the min­istry’s web­site last Mon­day seek­ing an ex­pres­sion of in­ter­est (EOI) for suit­ably qual­i­fied en­ti­ties to up­grade its ma­chine-read­able pass­port to an e-pass­port and its pass­port por­tal for the Im­mi­gra­tion Di­vi­sion.

The dead­line for sub­mis­sion of this EOI is June 19, 2026.

One of the scope overviews of the EOI is that the en­ti­ty must be able to de­vel­op and com­mis­sion a ful­ly func­tion­al on­line ap­pli­ca­tion for e-pass­ports, with on­line pay­ment pro­cess­ing.

Ap­pli­cants pay $500 for an or­di­nary pass­port and $700 for a busi­ness pass­port at the Im­mi­gra­tion Di­vi­sion’s five op­er­a­tional of­fices in Port-of-Spain, San­gre Grande, Point Fortin, Ch­agua­nas and To­ba­go us­ing their deb­it or cred­it cards.

These five of­fices han­dle rough­ly be­tween 150 and 175 ap­point­ments dai­ly.

The Im­mi­gra­tion Di­vi­sion’s sixth of­fice in San Fer­nan­do has been closed since last year.

In­ad­e­quate staffing, im­mi­gra­tion of­fi­cers not re­ceiv­ing over­time pay and al­lowances, and the clo­sure of the San Fer­nan­do Im­mi­gra­tion Di­vi­sion of­fice have been blamed for the long de­lays.

Two weeks ago, Min­is­ter of Home­land Se­cu­ri­ty Roger Alexan­der re­vealed that a cor­rup­tion rack­et had been un­cov­ered at the Im­mi­gra­tion Di­vi­sion, where mil­lions of dol­lars were al­leged­ly paid to im­mi­gra­tion of­fi­cials and em­ploy­ees over the years for cit­i­zen­ship, pass­port ap­point­ments, res­i­den­cy per­mits and work per­mits.

Alexan­der’s rev­e­la­tion came against the back­drop of scores of cit­i­zens vent­ing their frus­tra­tion and anger on so­cial me­dia re­gard­ing the long de­lay in book­ing a pass­port ap­point­ment.

Wait­ing for hours

On Jan­u­ary 16, the Guardian Me­dia In­ves­ti­ga­tions Desk ap­plied for a pass­port ap­point­ment on the web­site. The ear­li­est avail­able date was May 12 at the San­gre Grande of­fice.

On that day, it was ob­served that scores of ap­point­ment hold­ers and walk-ins (those with­out ap­point­ments) ar­rived be­fore 7 am to have their ap­pli­ca­tions processed.

The walk-in ap­pli­cants had to stand in the blis­ter­ing sun for hours un­til those with con­firmed ap­point­ments were at­tend­ed to.

Women clutch­ing ba­bies, the el­der­ly and par­ents with ir­ri­ta­ble chil­dren wait­ed to be se­lect­ed.

Many were turned away be­cause the im­mi­gra­tion of­fi­cers on du­ty could not ac­com­mo­date every­one.

An im­mi­gra­tion of­fi­cer ad­vised the re­ject­ed walk-ins to re­turn on May 14.

“Come to the of­fice at least 5 or 6 am so you can get in front of the line ear­ly. We will on­ly be tak­ing a few peo­ple as walk-ins. It will be on a first-come, first-served ba­sis,” the of­fi­cer told the walk-ins who were un­suc­cess­ful.

Last Tues­day, the Guardian Me­dia In­ves­ti­ga­tions Desk vis­it­ed the im­mi­gra­tion of­fice in Ch­agua­nas, which was crowd­ed with peo­ple who had ap­point­ments and walk-ins.

When the doors opened at 7 am, on­ly a few walk-ins were cho­sen.

A woman from Gas­par­il­lo, who showed up at 4.50 am and was turned away, com­plained bit­ter­ly to the at­tend­ing of­fi­cer.

“This is my sec­ond con­sec­u­tive day at this of­fice, and you’re telling me to come back. I can’t be­lieve this,” she com­plained.

Hold­ing a green plas­tic fold­er con­tain­ing her doc­u­ments, the woman ex­plained she had an ap­point­ment in late April, which she could not at­tend due to a health is­sue.

In May, she reap­plied on­line and was giv­en an ap­point­ment on Oc­to­ber 26, which meant she had to wait five months.

“It was the ear­li­est date that I got.”

Her pass­port will ex­pire in a few days.

“I want to at­tend my sis­ter’s grad­u­a­tion in Ju­ly, and I need to re­new my pass­port. My frus­tra­tion is just build­ing. I am so an­gry right now be­cause this was my third at­tempt to get a walk-in at this of­fice be­tween last week and this week, and noth­ing worked. It’s dis­ap­point­ing. Imag­ine you are pay­ing for a ser­vice and can’t even get it. This is what you call pass­port pres­sure and pan­de­mo­ni­um. What is up­set­ting is that no one has in­formed the pub­lic of what is caus­ing the de­lay with the ap­point­ment sys­tem on­line,” she said.

Her pleas did not pull at the of­fi­cer’s heart­strings, as he in­struct­ed her to try again.

Sit­ting in a Hilux van in the car park, a mid­dle-aged man said his wife ap­plied for an ap­point­ment in late Jan­u­ary and was giv­en May 19 as her date.

“To be hon­est, this is the first time she has had to wait so long for an ap­point­ment date. It was nev­er this tough. We came at 5 am from Mara­bel­la, and my wife is still in­side the of­fice. It’s al­most 10.30 am. So I have been wait­ing out­side for over 5 hours. Peo­ple are re­al­ly suf­fer­ing to get their pass­ports...old and young. Some­thing is not right,” he point­ed out.

On Wednes­day, the scene in­side the Port-of-Spain of­fice was equal­ly chaot­ic.

All the seats in the lob­by were filled with peo­ple who had ap­point­ments.

A line of walk-in ap­pli­cants stretched from the im­mi­gra­tion of­fi­cers’ four work win­dows al­most to the en­trance of the room, more than 25 feet away.

On the op­po­site side, an­oth­er line snaked from the work win­dows to the chairs, span­ning ap­prox­i­mate­ly 20 feet.

A mid­dle-aged man who did not have an ap­point­ment said he took a gam­ble by vis­it­ing the of­fice, hop­ing to get his pass­port to trav­el abroad fol­low­ing the death of his nephew.

While his nephew was re­cent­ly buried, he said he want­ed to vis­it his sis­ter over­seas, as she was not cop­ing well with the death.

Af­ter stand­ing in line for more than four hours, his at­tempt was fruit­less.

“They told me to come back next Tues­day be­cause they were on­ly deal­ing with a few walk-ins to­day.”

Dis­ap­point­ed and with frus­tra­tion etched on his face, he left.

Au­dit need­ed

Im­mi­gra­tion at­tor­ney Criston J Williams claimed bribery and cor­rup­tion con­tin­ue to be the coun­try’s biggest prob­lems, even at the Im­mi­gra­tion Di­vi­sion.

He claimed sev­er­al peo­ple had been charged with hav­ing a fraud­u­lent stamp on their pass­ports, many of whom he rep­re­sent­ed in court.

A few of the vic­tims were Venezue­lans and Chi­nese na­tion­als.

His clients claimed they paid im­mi­gra­tion of­fi­cials be­tween $10,000 and $25,000 to have their pass­ports stamped so they could con­tin­ue to re­side in the coun­try.

The Im­mi­gra­tion Di­vi­sion fa­cil­i­tates vis­i­tor ex­ten­sion ser­vices for for­eign na­tion­als wish­ing to ex­tend their le­gal stay in T&T.

Williams said the stamp on many of his clients’ pass­ports turned out to be fraud­u­lent.

“We have ex­am­ples of that in my law firm. For the 12 years I have been do­ing im­mi­gra­tion law, this has been on­go­ing.”

Williams said the min­istry needs to pay close at­ten­tion to the sys­tem and con­duct an au­dit of the op­er­a­tions and the res­i­den­cy grant­ed to for­eign na­tion­als over the years.

“Be­cause you don’t know who you let in­to the coun­try. These would be peo­ple with se­ri­ous and or­gan­ised crime links who can fund a unit. It opens a gate­way for gang mem­bers, nar­co-ter­ror­ists, ter­ror­ists and white-lev­el crime. It geopo­lit­i­cal­ly ex­pos­es you.”

Ap­point­ment chal­lenges

In De­cem­ber 2023, the then Min­istry of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty in­formed the pub­lic that an on­line pass­port ap­point­ment sys­tem had been launched with a new eAp­point­ment plat­form.

The min­istry ad­vised that the pre­vi­ous web­site for sched­ul­ing pass­port ap­pli­ca­tion ap­point­ments, www.ttpass­port.in­fo, had been dis­con­tin­ued.

Cit­i­zens were ad­vised to vis­it the eAp­point­ment web­site at https://ap­point­ments.gov.tt to sched­ule a pass­port ap­point­ment.

A call-in sys­tem (225-4664) was used be­fore 2020 for the ap­point­ment of ma­chine-read­able pass­ports. It was dis­con­tin­ued, and there­after pass­port ap­point­ments were fa­cil­i­tat­ed via the web­site www.ttpass­port.in­fo.