NAIROBI, Kenya, Jun 7 – The Commission on Administrative Justice, also known as the Ombudsman, want the department of immigration to refund all passport applicants who were overcharged for passport.
Florence Kajuju, Chairperson of the Commission, stated that investigations had revealed a lack of appropriate mechanisms to automate refunds of excess payments by passport applicants.
“Many Kenyans lost their money when they falsely paid more money while applying for passports through the eCitizen platform. You cannot say that you do not require policy guidelines, yet you are setting up a system that then there are emerging challenges like refund mechanism,” she said.
“The Commission undertook investigations into allegations that the Department of Immigration was overcharging citizens for passports. The investigation was triggered by several complaints made on social media.”
Kajuju advised Kithure Kindiki, Minister of Interior, to increase the budget allocation for the Department.
Kajuju claims that the funds are going to be used by the Department of Immigration Services for the purchase of new, high-capacity, passport printing machines and the maintenance of the old ones.
“The new machines will be a solution to the delays in the processing of passports because of the continuous breakdown of printing machines reported by the department,” she added.
In the report released, it noted that some applicants who had paid for a “B” series passport, which contained 50 pages, were issued with the ‘A’ series passports of 34 pages.
“All complaints alleging overcharging of passport fees were found to be true while the Department of Immigration’s allegation that the complainants edited their application to a lower series was found to be false,” stated the report.
“It was confirmed that the seven complainants applied for “B” series passports, which were the only options at the time, and paid KSh 6,050, but were instead issued “A” series passports.”
The Ombudsman noted that there were no policies in place to guide immigration employees regarding issues that may arise during the application process, including the cancellation of a request.
“The department lacked an internal policy or procedure to guide and regulate issues that may arise during passport processing, such as application editing and cancellation,” added Ombudsman.
The Ombudsman’s call for a refund comes after Immigration Department Tuesday, in a second statement stated that they were experiencing a lack of printing material.
The announcement came amid uproar by Kenyans over the delays in acquiring passports at the hands of the constantly faulty machine, the government’s laxity in addressing the matter is now raising more questions than answers.
Kithure Kindiki of the Interior Cabinet promised on May 31 to repair a broken passport printing machine within seven working days. He also committed to clearing the backlog until June 30.
Kindiki informed reporters that 42,000 applications pending will be resolved within 21 days, once the printing problem is fixed.
Kindiki, in his second public statement of accountability, acknowledged the delays caused by the breakdown, and that some applicants had to wait several months for their passports.
“We have taken urgent remedial measure to correct that problem. I plead for patience and within 7 days, we will restore the broken equipment and we already have stocks that arrived on Friday which can help us clear the backlog and help us with the normal ongoing applications,” Kindiki said.
The Immigration Department will be processing new passport applications in seven days, once the backlog of applications is cleared.
Kindiki also committed to processing emergency requests within 24 hours.
The Interior CS stated that he received complaints about immigration officials asking for bribes in order to expedite their applications.
He added that the government will make far-reaching administrative changes within the Department of Immigration to “make sure that we make it impossible for any person to ask for a bribe from a Kenyan to provide passport services.”
The Interior CS warned corrupt immigration officials that they would face the law.
“Any person within our offices who is giving the government a bad name, we will just treat you as a criminal. In my many responsibilities, I am going to supervise that exercise myself,” he warned.
