Government has announced the extension of the deadline for the expiry of the old machine-readable passports to 2022.
Following the introduction of the new East African E-passport, government had mulled plans to have the old machine-readable passports phased out for the new ones.
However, according to the latest statement by 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.
“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,”Mutambi said in a statement.
The Ministry of Internal Affairs Permanent Secretary however urged members of the public to use this window until 2022 to acquire the new e-passports to avoid any inconveniences when the deadline approaches.
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.