Interior Cabinet Secretary Kithure Kindiki has revealed that the delay in processing passports is due to widespread corruption at Nyayo House.
At a hearing with the Regional Integration Committee on Thursday, August 24, Kindiki conceded that government officials are accepting bribes for services that are supposed to be free.
Despite the backlog being attributed to a broken printer, Kindiki assured the committee that efforts are being made to clean up the corruption at the immigration offices.
He even threatened to declare Nyayo House a crime scene if necessary. The current passport backlog stands at 58,000, causing many Kenyans to wait in long queues from early in the morning.
“I have received credible intelligence that could suggest that part of our problem in the processing of passports is a corruption problem. There are good officers who are there serving the country patriotically but there are others collecting bribes and harassing the people of Kenya to get services that they should be getting for free,” Kindiki told the committee.
On a daily basis, Immigration and Citizen Services handles around 5,000 passport applications.
The department is striving to issue passports within seven days but aims to reduce that waiting time to three days in the future and even 24 hours in emergencies.
However, Kenyans will still have to wait 21 days for their identity cards to be processed.
In the pipeline is a plan to sub out the current cards with a digital Maisha number that will hold dual usage as a Death Certificate identifier following the passing of a person.
The various initiatives are currently in progress.
