South Sudan’s immigration chief said they have received five new machines for processing passports and nationality certificates, along with 100,000 nationality cards, in a move aimed at improving the issuance of national documents.
Maj. Gen. Elia Kosta Faustino, Director General of Civil Registry, Nationality, Passports and Immigration, told reporters in Juba on Thursday that the Ministry of Interior had purchased the machines, including two for passport processing and three for issuing nationality certificates.
“It is a pleasure for me today to announce to our people, the Republic of South Sudan, that we have received a new generation of our system,” Kosta said at a press conference.
“That is five machines, two for passport and three for ID or nationality. This new system which we received, or the new machines, is more advanced than the one we were using before. We are going to install it, then we will start using it within this period,” he added.
Kosta said the new equipment would help reduce delays and improve service delivery for citizens applying for passports and nationality certificates.
He said the machines would be deployed to key registration centres to speed up data processing and the printing of nationality cards.
According to Kosta, the arrival of the 100,000 nationality cards is expected to ease shortages that have affected applicants in recent months.
“We here also, we are moving with the world,” he said. “That is what I want to inform our people, and then plus that, we have received also 100,000 nationality cards.”
Kosta added that the country was also expecting a new shipment of passport booklets to address previous shortages.
“And soon we are going to receive a passport booklet, so that we fill the gap which used to happen,” he said.
“If the people observe now, the number of the people here reduced, because everybody who processes a document with either nationality or passport, they used to receive it immediately after one or two days,” he added.
The immigration chief also said the department had received 100 mobile registration kits a week ago, which would be distributed across the country’s states to facilitate the processing of travel documents.
“Our plan for it is that we are going to divide it into all states so that people can do their process there and they send it just here for production,” Kosta said.
He said the current fee for a nationality certificate was 15,000 South Sudanese pounds, though the amount could change after the approval of a new national budget.
“Maybe it will change because we are still waiting for the new financial budget,” he said.
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