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Thursday, March 28, 2024

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3-month passport backlog slows process

General3-month passport backlog slows process
If you are excited and in a hurry to get one of those colorful, new Belize-CARICOM passports, you better hold your horses, because the Immigration Department has to first sort through 3 months’ backlog, dating back to November/December 2008, before getting to your application.
 
While the usual waiting time for a passport is two weeks, the backlog means Belizeans have to wait roughly four weeks, unless you pay $100 to secure emergency service in five days, according to information from Immigration Director, Gareth Murrillo.
 
He informed us Thursday that while the forms have not changed, the fees have. Whereas the cost of a new or replacement passport was $30 across the board, it will now be $50 for persons over 16, and $30 for minors. (The same fee applies for replacement of expired passports.) The cost for replacing a lost or damaged passport, however, is now $85 – $30 more than before. (Emergency passport applications have increased by $45, to $100.)
 
Murillo told us that the new passport, which is valid for 10 years, has great security features, and includes the holder’s fingerprint, as well as photo, and is machine readable to meet new international standards.
 
Belizeans using their passports to enter another CARICOM country, are automatically eligible to stay there for six months, said Murrillo.
 
Usually, the Immigration Department processes between 25,000 and 28,000 passports a year, so it means that the backlog of passport applications is in the thousands.
 
The Government is encouraging Belizeans whose passports are not the machine readable type to have them changed by the end of 2009.
 
(For more on the CARICOM passport, see story on page 2 of the March 18, 2009 issue of Amandala.)

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