The Directorate of Immigration Services on Wednesday, March 20 evening received 112,700 passport booklets.

The booklets, received by Immigration Principal Secretary Julius Bitok, comprised 92,400, 50-page (B-series) and 20,300, 66-page (C- series).

This consignment is in addition to 50,000, 50-page booklets, that the department received last week.

Further, additional booklets, including the 34-page (A-series), have already been procured and are expected in the country from next month.

The department insisted on its earlier stance that the issuance of passports will be prioritised on a first-in-first-out basis.

For those Kenyans with pending 34-page passports applications and have an urgent need to travel, the department is advising them to upgrade their applications to the 50-page booklet through the eCitizen portal.

“No physical visit to Immigration offices is necessary to apply for the upgrade,” the department says in a statement.

Applicants with pending applications and those who are yet to collect their passports can track the status of their applications by sending an SMS with their eCitizen application reference code to 22222.

To enhance the passport issuance capacity and reduce the waiting time, the Directorate has procured two modern passport printing machines that will be ready for commissioning by April 2024. Additional servers have also been installed to stabilise the system and secure relevant data.

Further, the Directorate is currently undertaking a comprehensive infrastructural upgrade of its facilities to provide a user-friendly environment and to accommodate the high rise in the number of clients.