The Immigration Department has silently extended the December 31, 2021 deadline for the phasing out of the old generation passport.
The Interior Ministry on February 4, 2021, extended the deadline to December 31, citing the Covid-19 pandemic that forced the Immigration department to scale down its operations.
In its statement announcing the extension of the process to phase out the old passport, the ministry said the extension would be the last and advised Kenyans to acquire the electronic passport to avoid travelling inconveniences.
The Interior Ministry said starting January 1 this year, the old dark blue passport would be null and void, and no Kenyan would be able to travel internationally without a valid EAC biometric e-passport.
However, responding to queries on the status of the old passports, Immigration Director-General Alexander Muteshi indicated the old passports will continue being in use.
“EAC changed the deadline for all EAC countries to November 2022,” Muteshi said in a message.
Kenya is rolling out the e-passport as part of the binding commitment by the EAC to move to the new biometric e-passport.
The decision to have the e-passport was arrived at during the 17th Ordinary Summit of the EAC Heads of State.
The issuance of the e-passport was to start by January 1, 2017, to phase out the current machine-readable East African and national passports from January 1, 2017, to December 31, 2018.
When this failed — due to lack of preparedness — the 35th EAC Council of Ministers directed member states to start issuance of the e-passport by January 31, 2018.
According to the East African Community, the new passport is expected to boost the free movement of people across the region and it will be in line with the implementation of the Common Market Protocol, which guarantees the right to move freely between EAC member countries.
Article 9 of the protocol on travel documents provides that, “A citizen of a partner state who wishes to travel to another Partner State shall use a valid common standard travel document; 2. The partner states which have agreed to use machine‐readable and electronic national identity cards as travel documents may do so”.
The partner states that have agreed to use machine‐readable and electronic national identity cards shall work out modalities for the implementation of the aforementioned provision two.
Source: The Star
