Freeport, Grand Bahama Island – Friday, September 11th,
2009 Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Foreign Affairs The Hon. Brent
Symonette met with the media on Grand Bahama Island at the passport office to announce positive changes slated to occur at the passport office
that will facilitate a quicker turnaround time for the delivery of new passports.
The passport office on Grand Bahama Island has come under
tremendous fire by members of the Grand Bahama community due to what has been
described as poor service, long lines, slow turnaround time and the
inconvenience of having to reacquire previously submitted documents. In some instances passport turnaround
times have exceeded several months.
To address the aforementioned issues, Minister
Symonette announced that The Freeport Passport office has: relocated to a
larger space, hired additional staff, increased the number of phone lines, returned
most of the old passport files from storage back to the Freeport office and purchased
two more machines to speed up the production of passports; one of which will be
dedicated solely to the production of passports for Grand Bahamians. Further, The
minister went on to say that the Freeport office is now able to do enrollment, data
entry, third level and final level approval in Freeport without having to go
through Nassau, all within a week and a half. Production of the actual
passports themselves according to the minister should take “approximately a
week.” It is hoped that the total
delivery
time for a new passport will take about three weeks.
The DPM admitted that a number of passport applications have "fallen through the cracks" however, he assured that they are running a trace to find out why...
Also announced by Minister Symonette was the coming online
of the Miami passport office September 1st, 2009 which will soon have the
same capabilities as the Grand Bahama office.
The Bahamas Weekly invites you to view the video to get the
full details of Hon DPM Symonette's remarks.
Video shot on-location by Marlena Edwards
