AKASH SAMA­ROO

Lead Ed­i­tor – Pol­i­tics

akash.sama­roo@cnc3.co.tt

The slow is­suance of pass­port book­lets is con­tin­u­ing as im­mi­gra­tion of­fi­cials at­tempt to stretch Trinidad and To­ba­go’s re­main­ing stock un­til a new ship­ment is ex­pect­ed in Sep­tem­ber.

In­for­ma­tion ob­tained by Guardian Me­dia in­di­cates that of­fi­cials re­main un­der pres­sure to care­ful­ly man­age the dwin­dling in­ven­to­ry, with the ex­ist­ing sup­ply now un­der­stood to be at a crit­i­cal­ly low lev­el.

Guardian Me­dia was told the cur­rent stock has ef­fec­tive­ly en­tered what of­fi­cials pri­vate­ly de­scribe as “the red” and that, if ap­pli­ca­tions al­ready in the sys­tem were processed at full speed, the re­main­ing pass­port book­lets could be ex­haust­ed with­in ap­prox­i­mate­ly two weeks.

As a re­sult, pass­port ap­pli­ca­tions con­tin­ue to be processed at a slow­er pace as au­thor­i­ties ra­tion the avail­able stock while await­ing ad­di­tion­al sup­plies.

Guardian Me­dia was al­so told that ap­pli­cants may now wait up to three months to re­ceive their pass­ports.

The ob­jec­tive, sources said, is to en­sure suf­fi­cient pass­port book­lets re­main avail­able un­til fresh sup­plies ar­rive in Sep­tem­ber.

The lat­est de­vel­op­ments sug­gest that the mea­sures first re­port­ed by Guardian Me­dia ear­li­er this month re­main in ef­fect de­spite pub­lic as­sur­ances from the Min­istry of Home­land Se­cu­ri­ty that there was no pass­port short­age.

On Ju­ly 6, Guardian Me­dia re­port­ed that sup­plies of ma­chine-read­able pass­port book­lets were near­ing de­ple­tion and that im­mi­gra­tion of­fi­cials had been in­struct­ed to slow the rate of is­suance to avoid ex­haust­ing the avail­able in­ven­to­ry.

At the time, sources said re­peat­ed warn­ings had been raised with­in the Im­mi­gra­tion Di­vi­sion over de­clin­ing stock lev­els af­ter the cur­rent ad­min­is­tra­tion as­sumed of­fice.

The re­port sparked con­cern among mem­bers of the pub­lic, par­tic­u­lar­ly those with im­mi­nent trav­el plans, and prompt­ed crit­i­cism from the Op­po­si­tion over the Gov­ern­ment’s man­age­ment of the pass­port pro­cure­ment process.

The fol­low­ing day, the Min­istry of Home­land Se­cu­ri­ty re­ject­ed sug­ges­tions that cit­i­zens would be un­able to ob­tain pass­ports, in­sist­ing that ap­pli­ca­tions con­tin­ued to be ac­cept­ed and processed as nor­mal.

In a state­ment, the min­istry dis­closed that it had re­ceived 50,000 ma­chine-read­able pass­port book­lets in Oc­to­ber 2025 and a fur­ther 12,000 in June 2026.

It al­so said few­er than 6,000 pass­ports were is­sued on av­er­age each month and an­nounced that ap­prox­i­mate­ly 48,000 ad­di­tion­al pass­port book­lets had been se­cured and were ex­pect­ed to ar­rive in the coun­try.

The min­istry said pro­cure­ment of the ad­di­tion­al book­lets be­gan in March as part of the tran­si­tion to a new sup­pli­er and main­tained there would be no in­ter­rup­tion to pass­port ser­vices.

Of­fi­cials al­so sought to re­as­sure the pub­lic that work on the coun­try’s tran­si­tion to elec­tron­ic pass­ports was pro­gress­ing. They said the eval­u­a­tion of sub­mis­sions for the e-pass­port pro­gramme was un­der­way and de­scribed the pro­cure­ment process as trans­par­ent and com­pet­i­tive.

How­ev­er, the min­istry did not dis­close how many pass­port book­lets re­mained in stock.

Guardian Me­dia un­der­stands that while ad­di­tion­al pass­port book­lets have been or­dered, im­mi­gra­tion of­fi­cials con­tin­ue to reg­u­late the pace of pass­port pro­duc­tion to pre­serve the re­main­ing in­ven­to­ry un­til the next ship­ment ar­rives.

The con­tin­ued ra­tioning comes as de­mand for pass­ports re­mains steady, par­tic­u­lar­ly dur­ing the tra­di­tion­al sum­mer trav­el pe­ri­od, when many cit­i­zens seek to re­new ex­pired doc­u­ments or ob­tain pass­ports for over­seas trav­el.

It al­so rais­es fresh ques­tions about whether the re­main­ing in­ven­to­ry will be suf­fi­cient to bridge the gap be­fore the ex­pect­ed Sep­tem­ber de­liv­ery.

The min­istry has con­sis­tent­ly main­tained that pass­port ser­vices re­main op­er­a­tional and that cit­i­zens can con­tin­ue to sub­mit ap­pli­ca­tions while the Gov­ern­ment ad­vances the pro­cure­ment of ad­di­tion­al pass­port book­lets and the wider tran­si­tion to an e-pass­port sys­tem.