Akash Sama­roo

and Kay-Marie Fletch­er

The lengthy de­lays af­fect­ing pass­port ap­pli­cants across Trinidad and To­ba­go could be re­solved by Jan­u­ary 2027, with an­oth­er ship­ment of ap­prox­i­mate­ly 50,000 pass­port book­lets ex­pect­ed to ar­rive be­fore the end of No­vem­ber.

Sources with­in the Im­mi­gra­tion Di­vi­sion have told Guardian Me­dia that the in­com­ing ship­ment is ex­pect­ed to pro­vide suf­fi­cient stock to be­gin clear­ing the back­log of ap­pli­ca­tions in De­cem­ber, paving the way for a re­turn to nor­mal pro­cess­ing times in the new year.

Guardian Me­dia un­der­stands that, once the out­stand­ing ap­pli­ca­tions are ad­dressed, the Di­vi­sion ex­pects to re­sume its pre­vi­ous turn­around time of ap­prox­i­mate­ly three weeks from the date of an ap­pli­cant’s ap­point­ment.

The de­vel­op­ment will of­fer some hope to cit­i­zens who have faced un­usu­al­ly lengthy de­lays in ob­tain­ing or re­new­ing their pass­ports, with some ap­pli­cants telling Guardian Me­dia that they were wait­ing sev­er­al months for their trav­el doc­u­ments.

Among those still wait­ing is Soogrim Sook­lal, who at­tend­ed his pass­port in­ter­view at the Ch­agua­nas of­fice on Ju­ly 20.

More than 16 weeks lat­er, Sook­lal said he is be­com­ing in­creas­ing­ly frus­trat­ed as he ur­gent­ly needs the doc­u­ment for per­son­al trav­el and bank­ing trans­ac­tions.

Speak­ing to Guardian Me­dia via tele­phone yes­ter­day, Sook­lal said he has made sev­er­al calls to the Im­mi­gra­tion Di­vi­sion seek­ing an up­date but has been un­able to get a def­i­nite an­swer.

“I keep on call­ing them, and I call, and one girl an­swers me and tells me that, ‘Oh, well, when the pass­port is ready, we will call you and let you know.’”

Sook­lal said he was ini­tial­ly told he could ex­pect to re­ceive his pass­port by No­vem­ber 5.

How­ev­er, five days lat­er, he is still wait­ing.

He al­so claimed that an Im­mi­gra­tion Di­vi­sion em­ploy­ee warned that he might not re­ceive the doc­u­ment un­til 2027.

With his in­tend­ed trav­el date ap­proach­ing, Sook­lal said the un­cer­tain­ty has left him stressed, par­tic­u­lar­ly as he has been un­able to get a clear ex­pla­na­tion for the de­lay.

He added, “Some­thing is wrong some­where with them peo­ple, some­thing is wrong some­where.”

Pass­port ap­pli­cants who had their ap­point­ments at the Port-of-Spain Of­fice al­so ex­pressed sim­i­lar ex­pe­ri­ences.

Two women who ap­plied had in­ter­views on Ju­ly 22 and Au­gust 24 in Port-of-Spain re­spec­tive­ly, have al­so told Guardian Me­dia that they are still await­ing their trav­el doc­u­ments.

Ear­li­er this month, for­mer Copy­right Mu­sic Or­gan­i­sa­tion of Trinidad and To­ba­go (COTT) pres­i­dent Cur­tis Jor­dan re­vealed that he had been wait­ing 15 weeks for his child’s pass­port, de­spite ini­tial­ly be­ing ad­vised that the doc­u­ment would be ready with­in 12 weeks.

Jor­dan ex­plained that his fam­i­ly be­gan the ap­pli­ca­tion process in Feb­ru­ary but was un­able to se­cure an ap­point­ment un­til Ju­ly 20, five months lat­er.

He ex­pressed con­cern that the con­tin­ued de­lay could dis­rupt his fam­i­ly’s trav­el plans.

The de­lays have al­so raised con­cerns among fam­i­lies hop­ing to trav­el over­seas for Christ­mas.

Sources with­in the Di­vi­sion are al­so chal­leng­ing an ex­pla­na­tion of­fered by Min­is­ter of Home­land Se­cu­ri­ty Roger Alexan­der, who re­cent­ly sug­gest­ed that pan­ic buy­ing of pass­ports was con­tribut­ing to the in­creased de­mand.

They have dis­missed that as­sess­ment, main­tain­ing that the chal­lenges af­fect­ing pass­port is­suance are not the re­sult of cit­i­zens un­nec­es­sar­i­ly rush­ing to ob­tain trav­el doc­u­ments.

In Ju­ly, Guardian Me­dia re­vealed that the na­tion­al stock had fall­en to crit­i­cal­ly low lev­els, prompt­ing im­mi­gra­tion of­fi­cials to slow the rate of pass­port is­suance to pre­vent the re­main­ing sup­plies from be­ing ex­haust­ed.

At the time, sources in­di­cat­ed that warn­ings had re­peat­ed­ly been raised about de­clin­ing in­ven­to­ry and the po­ten­tial for a short­age if ad­di­tion­al sup­plies were not se­cured.

The Min­istry of Home­land Se­cu­ri­ty sub­se­quent­ly re­ject­ed claims of a short­age, re­veal­ing that 50,000 pass­port book­lets had been re­ceived in Oc­to­ber 2025 and an­oth­er 12,000 in June 2026.

The min­istry al­so an­nounced that ap­prox­i­mate­ly 48,000 ad­di­tion­al book­lets were be­ing sourced.

In Au­gust, Guardian Me­dia con­firmed that an ear­ly ship­ment of 8,000 book­lets had ar­rived, pro­vid­ing tem­po­rary re­lief. An­oth­er 40,000 were ex­pect­ed be­tween Sep­tem­ber 30 and Oc­to­ber 7.

How­ev­er, the back­log con­tin­ued to grow, with ap­pli­cants re­port­ing in­creas­ing­ly lengthy waits for their doc­u­ments.

Last week, Op­po­si­tion Leader Pen­ne­lope Beck­les de­mand­ed an­swers from Alexan­der, claim­ing that cit­i­zens at­tempt­ing to se­cure pass­port ap­point­ments were be­ing as­signed dates as far away as April 2027.

She al­so ques­tioned whether the pre­vi­ous­ly promised ship­ments had ar­rived and what mea­sures the Gov­ern­ment was im­ple­ment­ing to ad­dress the de­lays.

The Im­mi­gra­tion Di­vi­sion is al­so prepar­ing for the Gov­ern­ment’s planned tran­si­tion from ma­chine-read­able pass­ports to a new elec­tron­ic pass­port sys­tem.

The Di­vi­sion is cur­rent­ly with­out a sub­stan­tive head as Mary St Hill-Bil­louin re­tired on Sep­tem­ber 7. The Home­land Se­cu­ri­ty Min­istry has since post­ed a va­can­cy for the po­si­tion, which at­tracts a salary of $39, 970 per month.