In the past, the longest wait used to be your zi char order at your favourite coffee shop when you’ve not eaten the entire day.
Now, it’s the processing time for your new passport.
Soon, that’s going to change.
You’d Just Need to Wait for 1 Week for Your Passport By End of This Year
Before COVID-19 struck, people would often renew their passports six months before they expire, as you’d need at least six months’ validity to travel out of the country.
And usually, the processing time is about one week; the only slight delay is booking a slot to collect your passport from the ICA Building.
But with many people not renewing their passports in the last two years, and the borders reopening earlier this year, hordes of people have been renewing their passports this year, causing a bottleneck—so much so that nowadays, you can’t walk in to the ICA Building—you’d need to have an appointment.
In addition, passport processing time has since ballooned to six weeks, but you can appeal online to expedite the process if you’ve a valid reason (with supporting documents).
It’s been about four months since the borders reopen, so when is this bottleneck going to clear?
By end-2022, according to the director of ICA’s citizen services centre, Senior Assistant Commissioner(SAC) Dominic Chua.
This projected timeline is based on the number of passport applications ICA receives each day and how many it can process since it introduced stepped-up measures to deal with the surge in applications.
According to SAC Chua, about 300 officers from other work units across ICA have been added to the team that process passport since May this year.
This isn’t a simple task that can be automated, since they’d need to check on the applicants’ eligibility and ensure that all passports printed meet quality and security standards.
I mean, this is a passport leh, not your Instagram profile image.
Nowadays, they produce 6,500 new passports daily, compared to 2,000 new passports daily before COVID-19 hit.
In May this year, ICA receives about 7,000 passport applications daily. This month, there are about 4,500 applications daily.
So yes, looking at the numbers, it does seem like the ICA Building might also be reopening soon.
Now that you might have your passport faster, the other problem is…do you have the money to travel?
Featured Image: Tang Yan Song / Shutterstock.com