The Summer Saturdays initiative at the Passport Office has proven to be a huge success. It was announced in June that Passport Offices in New Providence and Freeport, Grand Bahama would open on Saturdays during the busy summer months until August 31st.

Chief Passport Officer, P. Nicholas Symonette says approximately 3000 people have been enrolled on Saturdays alone. “We’ve seen a lot of persons that showed up to the airport not knowing their passport expired that have been able to take advantage of it as well. We also have been putting out tips, just passport tips, reminders that you can actually renew your passports a year in advance now. You don’t have to wait for six months. So we’re urging persons to do it in advance, a year in advance. And then we also reminded the public that children’s passports expire every five years.”

According to Symonette there are a number of persons seeking to receive passports without the proper documents. He said, “we still have a lot of persons who are coming in here, I mean young kids, who are coming in here with the birth certificates, the births not registered. So we’ve been encouraging persons there is an extended time frame that parents do have to register the birth so we’ve encouraged them to go there and do that and at the same time we have the issues with names.”

The Chief Passport Officer also said the backlog of passport applications has been resolved and that the time frame for passport production is being met consistently.

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