New E-Passports Acquisition Deadline Pushed To 2020, DP Ruto Announces

The government has postponed the deadline date of out facing the old passports and bringing in the e-passport to 2020.

This decision was a result of the low number of citizens who have changed their passports to the new passports with electronic features.

Deputy President William Ruto announced the new date while speaking to Kenyans in diaspora in Italy. They shared the challenges they face while trying to acquire the new passports.

DP Ruto said that only 400,000 out of the 2.5 million passport holders in Kenya had changed their passports to the new one.

In the initial plan by the immigration, only London, Paris, Dubai, Pretoria, Berlin and Washington DC would offer facilities to change the passports to the newer version.

Read: DP William Ruto Declares That He Supports Calls For A Referendum

This means that Kenyans living in other regions and countries would have to travel to one of these cities or come back to Kenya to acquire the new passports.

This decision drew a hot debate with citizens sharing with the DP that the decision would not be feasible for all.

They argued that some of them are students who are on a tight budget. They also mentioned accommodation, Visa and transport as some of the challenges they would face.

The government had set the deadline for August 2019, and all government workers were ordered to acquire their e-passports by 1 March 2019, in order to be eligible to travel.

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