The Acting Director General of the State Department of Immigration Evelyn Chelugut has announced that the department is introducing day and night shifts to deal with the backlog of processing passports.
Speaking at Nyayo House, Chelugut said the shifts will run from Monday to Sunday.
The shifts will run for 14 hours and applications will be received from 7 am to 9 pm.
Chelugut further said they have now dedicated counters for urgent cases.
She said plans are underway to purchase new equipment for printing passports on a 24-hour basis.
“We are also working to boost our staff beginning this week as a measure to improve the processing,” She added.
She appealed to the staff to work as a team to serve Kenyans efficiently.
Chelugut also emphasized that the government is working round the clock to deal with the issues at hand.
The announcement comes after an in-house memo that was issued last Friday to all staff at the State Department of Immigration and Citizen Services.
The memo was to notify the staff of a meeting to be held today at 6:40 am at the passport banking hall where all were required to attend without fail.
Last week, Interior Cabinet Secretary Kithure Kindiki publicly announced that brokers working with bureaucrats at immigration have turned Nyayo House into a den of crime in which applicants must pay a bribe to get a passport.
Kindiki said he received credible intel that among the contributing factors to delayed passport processing at the office is corruption.
The CS told Parliament that he would take leadership in cleaning up the mess in the agencies that fall within his ministry.
“We will take very drastic action, if need be we will seal off the place and declare it a scene of crime. We will rid that place of all criminals including the brokers who extort money around there,” he said.
