Passport applications going fully online

The process for Barbadian passport applications will soon move to a 100 per cent online process, says Acting Chief Immigration Officer, Margaret Inniss.

Speaking during Thursday’s induction ceremony for 36 new Barbadian citizens at the Barbados Immigration Department, Inniss outlined several changes the department had implemented over the past several months in other to streamline the many processes available to clients. She revealed that one such scheduled change is a move to a fully online system for persons applying for passports.

“The next thing that we have coming out soon would be the passport application form online. People are working remotely, you don’t want to come and physically mix, so as a part of the programme of reducing and being compliant with our social distancing, the online process is where we are going.

“In another six weeks or so, we can look to have that… right now we are in the stages of training, sensitizing both the internal and external customer. We will do a pilot programme and then we will throw it out there, then we can have ease of doing business,” she revealed.

Inniss added that the move is just one of many the department had implemented since the beginning of the pandemic in order to offer a better level of service to persons using the offices.

“In the last year or so, you would have seen with the online travel form, the ED card, we have revamped that. So that now in a COVID environment, you can go online and fill it out.

“You have the Barbados Welcome Stamp, a fully digital programme. You go online, fill out the form, and you get a response within five days. We are looking at revamping all of our services so that we can be competitive and have online services.”

Minister of Home Affairs Wilfred Abrahams also spoke during the ceremony, the first since Barbados switched to Republican status on November 30, 2021. He said the department has come a long way in providing the current high level of service.

“The Immigration Department was that department in government that people associated with long delays, they associated it with backlogs, and they associated it with all sorts of bad things. Nobody ever wants to go into an immigration department anywhere in the world.

“I can say that there has been a complete shift and turnaround, not just the perception of the department, but the output of the department, to the point where the backlog is almost down to zero. That is amazing and it could only have been done by a change in attitude with the Immigration Department working as a department of government in a transformative government to achieve the objectives of our government.” (SB)