Civil servants with old model passports will not be able to embark on any foreign trips following a new directive by the government.
Head of Public Service, Joseph Kinyua, made the announcement through a recently released memo dated April 15, 2019, which stated that all government officers who hadn't switched to the new digital passport would no longer make foreign trips.
"Travel clearance should not be issued to officers who do not hold the e-passport, there have been various hitches in the processing of visa and entry permits using the machine-readable ones," he stated.
Mr Kinyua disclosed to the Daily Nation that the general rule is that a passport should only be deemed valid for at least six months at the time of travel.
He added that the fast-looming deadline regarding the old generation passports invalidated any current holders of the same as it was less than six months away.
“Considering that the machine-readable passports will cease to be a valid travel document with effect from September 1, 2019, any machine-readable passport is already outside the 6 months validity period,” an excerpt of the circular revealed.
Public servants without the new e-passports who were scheduled to make foreign trips within the next few weeks would thus be forced to cancel.
The new passports were reportedly modelled in order to effectively secure the identity of citizens as well as fortifying the process of entry and exit at national borders points.
British security printer- De La Rue, won the bid to install the e-passport system that ensured Kenya complied with the International Civil Aviation Organisation (ICAO) global specifications and additional requirements set by the East African Community (EAC) members.
E-passports are embedded with a digital security mark described as a unique country-specific electronic signature that can be validated using each nations' allocated certificate.
