Slight change in Barbados passports

As the Immigration Department moves to simplify its operations, a page deemed to be useless is being removed from Barbados passports.

Minister of Home Affairs Wilfred Abrahams today acknowledged that the bio-data page in the passport was not necessary and a decision had been taken not to include it going forward.

He contended that much of the information on the page was already contained in the passport’s microchip, and some of it was irrelevant.

“If you open your passport at page 30 there is a bio-data page. It says how tall you are, the colour of your hair… the colour of your eyes, your occupation and all of those things.

“Now, people don’t stay in one occupation; ladies in particular change their hair colour quite often; there are coloured contacts. This is an irrelevant page and it is not required by law. The chip inside the passport can produce all of that data. It is entered in the system but it doesn’t have to be in the passport…. That page is wholly unnecessary,” Abrahams pointed out during a press conference at his ministry’s headquarters in Wildey, St Michael this morning.

Additionally, he explained, it required extra resources to print that particular bio-data page.

“That page is not printed through the same printer that the passport is printed on. So, at the end of that process you have to take that passport somewhere else to another department for somebody to physically enter that information and then print it from another station,” Abrahams added.

“Now that is a waste of time if ever there was one, so Cabinet also agreed, based on the recommendations of the Chief Immigration Officer and our need to streamline what it is that we are doing, that effective immediately, there is no requirement for the bio-data page in a Barbadian passport.”

The Minister said the Government was continually looking at ways to become more effective and efficient.

He said one of the main goals of the Immigration Department was to remove all the “red tape” and make its process more user friendly.

“I met with everybody in the Immigration Department and we are looking at all of the things under our immigration laws and our processes and policies that make no sense. Some things are there because they were always there. Some things are there because they made sense maybe 20 years ago but do not necessarily make sense now, so we are systematically going through the Immigration Act to make those corrections,” Abrahams said.

“We are going through all of our policies and procedures to make those corrections. We want to have our immigration process being user friendly, being a comfortable process, and respectful of the rights of the individual.” (RB)