It’s no secret that getting a Kenyan passport can be a terribly arduous process. However, we are told recent measures by the Ministry of Interior Cabinet have significantly fast-tracked the passport processing compared to former times.
Nevertheless, the passport application process in its current state is still riddled with unnecessary procedures that need optimizing to streamline the entire process. I captured some of these issues in my earlier post on tips on how to apply for a Kenyan passport which was entirely based on my first-hand experience.
The aforementioned article was primarily geared to the first phase of the entire process which includes submitting the application on the eCitizen platform and the biometric appointment at the immigration department offices.
On this article, however, I’ll be focusing on the final step that is passport collection. It’s in this last phase where the biggest challenges lie with the entire process, namely: the waiting time for passport collection.
Passport printing problems aside, my first-hand experience indicates that the source of the inordinate waiting times is actually attributable to simple communication, or rather, its glaring absence.
Unfortunately, as the passport printing presses have roared back to life, the same can’t be said of the immigration department’s communication to applicants of ready passports. The truth of the matter is that a lot of passports are already printed, however for whatever reason, this information is not reaching applicants.
This is especially true for applicants that applied for passports before the recent shake-up by the interior CS, i.e. pre-July 2023.
Take my case: I applied in April 2023 and had my biometrics taken by end of May yet by September 2023 I hadn’t received any communication regarding the passport’s status. This is in spite of us being advised to wait for communication via SMS and to track our passports on the Posta Booking and Collection Portal (passport.posta.co.ke).
That SMS never arrived, and the diligent checking of our tracking numbers on the portal over the months only returned this response: Tracking number not found. Come September the portal itself was down after being temporarily suspended. The portal is still unreachable at the time of this writing.
This turn of event seemed to suggest the lack of communication was simply a symptom of a much larger problem, that is: the bottleneck caused of having Posta handle the passport delivery and collection.
Earlier applicants had to use this Posta process, however, the immigration department never communicated to newer applicants that some of them would have to collect their passports at the immigration centres where they applied. Consequently, some applicants are under the misguided notion that their passports are not printed, yet in all likelihood are already printed and ready for collection.
Two friends and I learnt of this fact only after we contacted the immigration department on their social media pages inquiring about the status of our passports (two of us on Facebook and the other on Twitter).
Before contacting them, the passport stage on our respective eCitizen dashboards were still stuck on the first stage. In all our cases they eventually replied indicating the passports were ready for collection and that we were required to book for a passport collection appointment on eCitizen. This was after we had provided them with our tracking numbers.
Surprisingly, after this “consultation” both of us found that the passport stages’ had magically jumped to the final stage of collection and as such we were finally able to book for passport collection.
You can now see what I really mean with poor communication. It turns out that our passports were printed in June 2023 (2 months earlier) yet nobody had bothered to contact us despite them having all our contact information.
To avoid all these, here are a few tips on what you need to do before and when you go to collect your passport.
Passport Collection Tips
- If you have not received any communication regarding your passport collection, make sure to contact the immigration department and have them track your passport. You can call the immigration office where you had your biometrics taken or contact them on their official social media pages.
In the case of the latter, please beware of fraudsters who are masquerading as the immigration department. The official handle on Twitter is @ImmigrationDept and on Facebook you can message them on the State Department for Immigration and Citizen Services page. They’re more responsive on Facebook.
- Regularly monitor the status of your passport on the immigration’s eCitizen dashboard until when it gets to the final stage of Collection. If it takes longer than usual, contact the immigration department as explained in point one.
- Once the status changes to the collection stage, make sure to book the passport collection appointment at the centre where you had your biometrics taken. This is because all stations are available for selection, even though the passport will likely have already been delivered to the original station you used.
- On the appointment day, carry with you the eCitizen receipts that you were left with after the biometrics appointment, along with your National ID and the eCitizen appointment invoice. This invoice shows the date and time of the passport collection appointment. You can get it by reprinting your passport’s payment receipt but only after you have scheduled the appointment.
- Finally, make a point to go for collection as early as possible to avoid possible delays from long queues. Nevertheless, if there are too many of you booked on that day, then expect for it to take a few hours.
