Kindiki Summons Immigration Bosses As 10-Day Countdown Begins
After his series of impromptu visits to Nyayo House, Kindiki called an early morning meeting of immigration officials.
Marvin Chege 
Interior Cabinet Secretary (CS) Kithure Kindiki on Friday, September 8 heightened ongoing reforms at the Department of Immigration at Nyayo House in a bid to rid the facility of the passport backlog that has attracted intense criticism from across the country.
After his series of impromptu visits to Nyayo House, Kindiki called an early morning meeting of immigration officials.
Among those in attendance at the meeting included Immigration and Citizen Services Principal Secretary Prof. Julius Bitok and Immigration and Citizen Services Director General Evelyn Cheluget.
"Early morning meeting with senior officers from the Immigration Department at Nyayo House, Nairobi, to review the implementation of operational and policy reforms established to resolve delayed processing of passports," stated Kindiki on his social media handles.
Interior CS, Kithure Kindiki holds a meeting with senior Immigration officials at Nyayo House on September 8, 2023. /KITHURE KINDIKI
The CS stressed the need to clear the backlog of 40,000 pending passport applications in the next 10 days as he had announced during his last impromptu visit on Thursday, September 7.
"The 10-day countdown to clear the historical backlog of pending 40,000 plus passport applications is on.
"Deployment of day and night shifts to facilitate full-capacity printing of passports, procurement of modern printing equipment, and recruitment of additional immigration officers will help us resolve the systemic challenges that have hampered service delivery," he added.
During the Thursday visit, the CS reviewed operations at the Immigration Department which were bearing fruit.
He added that citizens seeking passports and other vital citizenship documents are since being served with courtesy, and their inquiries are responded to by immigration staff in spirited efforts to clear the backlog and process new applications expeditiously.
Addressing the press outside the Nyayo House amid the ongoing crackdown to weed out corrupt cartels and streamline the passport issuing exercise and other services, Kindiki reassured Kenyans that all cases of delay will be cleared within the said period.
He said the Nyayo House vicinity which has been on the spot over reports of corruption and exploitation of Kenyans seeking passports and other services would be cleaned up and new equipment installed to ensure seamless operations.
“We have made arrangements for more equipment. The new equipment has not arrived...As you are aware we must use the government procedures of procurement and so our hands are tied to how fast we can do some things," he said.
“The only assurance I want to give today is that the backlog will not be there in the next 10 days to 11 days. We will have cleared it and it will never accumulate again.”
Prof Kindiki also announced that as part of the reforms at Nyayo House, the Kenya Kwanza administration was working to increase the number of customer care personnel and create more facilities to accommodate special groups such as expectant mothers, lactating and or PWDs.
“Mainly it is the management of the case log that we are working on and every day we are working better and better…in 10 to 11 days from now, we will even make other administrative changes here including the numbers of our customer care personnel but also separate facilities for expectant mothers, lactating and persons with disabilities…we feel we are not doing well in that area,” he explained.
“We will have more spacious banking halls separating applicants who are foreign nationals and Kenyan citizens .”
In the reforms, Kindiki banned loitering at Nyayo House citing that unscrupulous individuals were taking advantage of the queues to swindle Kenyans.
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