Nairobi — Interior Cabinet Secretary Kithure Kindiki on Thursday declared the Nyayo House passport centre a crime scene vowing to mount a decisive battle against passport cartels he accused of sabotage.
Kindiki made the remarks while appearing before the House Committee on Regional Integration where he singled out corrupt officials for impeding reforms.
"We have officers there who take bribes while they are supoosed to give Kenyans free services," he said.
"I will clean up Nyayo House once and for all. We will seal off Nyayo House and name it a scene of crime," he stated.
Kindiki disclosed that while measure put in place have seen the processing of passports rise to 5,000 per day (day and night), the current backlog stood at 58,000.
He attributed delays to deep-rooted graft noting that in certain parts of the country processing of National Identity cards was taking as long as three years.
"Some of the challenges we have including insecurity and terrorism, could be as a result of corrupt elements at Nyayo house. If you go to Wajir, 21-year-olds are waiting for IDs for 3 years now."
Kindiki's renewed promise to take out cartels at Nyayo House follows a similar commitment on May 31 which appears to have yielded little success.
The Cabinet Secretary had promised at the time to clear 42,000 pending applications by June 30 being twenty-one days after a fixing broken printer at the time.
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He promised the restoration of the broken passport printer within seven days.
Speaking while giving his second public accountability statement, Kindiki acknowledged that the breakdown had caused delays, with some applicants waiting for several months to receive 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 also help us with the normal ongoing applications," Kindiki said on May 31.
He said Immigration Department will process new passport applications within seven days once the backlog is cleared.
Kindiki further committed to the processing of emergency applications within 24 hours.
The Interior CS said he had received complaints from some members of the public who have expressed frustrations regarding immigrations officials who have asked for bribes to fast track 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 put corrupt immigration officials on notice saying they will 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.
