Government has announced an extension of the deadline for the expiry of all the old machine-readable passports to 2022.
When government rolled out the new East African E-Passports, plans to have the old machine-readable passports phased out for the new ones were hatched and were to fulfillment at the start of 2021.
However, as per the latest statement from the Ministry of Internal Affairs Permanent Secretary, Benon Mutambi, government has decided to halt plans to phase out the old passports by January 2021 as had earlier been announced.
In statement released to the public, Mutambi says the extension goes up to April 2022.
“Due to the restrictions that have been brought about by COVID-19, pandemic, the deadline of phasing out the machine-readable passports cannot be achieved without inconveniencing the public. We would like to notify the public of the decision to extend the phase-out period to April,4, 2022.”
The Ministry of Internal Affairs Permanent Secretary however urged members of the public to use this period to acquire the new passports to avoid any inconveniences when the deadline comes.
Government recently moved passport applications online, a process which is quicker since it doesn’t need one to get recommendations from local leaders as was the procedure in the past.
The new online system is integrated with the National Identity Registration Authority (NIRA) where information on national IDs is used for the passport.
