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Your passport in hand in 24 hours! |18 September 2014

Good news for all citizens of Seychelles. You can now get your passport within 24 hours of submitting your application.

This was announced yesterday by immigration and civil status principal secretary Charles Bastienne in an interview with Seychelles Nation.

“In order to fulfill the requests of the government to improve the quality of service in all the offices, departments and agencies, the immigration services, with a staff of 92 members, has committed itself to raise the standard of service. Several measures have been taken, thus making it possible for any Seychellois to receive his or her passport within 24 hours after submitting the correct application and the required documents. Before the same process was done in seven days,” said Mr Bastienne. For non-Seychellois who are married to Seychellois, now the dependent permit is being processed in a maximum of five days, if all documents are correct.

Other good news for companies is that Gainful Occupation Permits (GOP) are being processed within a period of one to five days provided every document is correct. The same application before was processed in four weeks.

“With these improvements, any transaction will not take longer than five working days,” stressed Mr Bastienne.

Only applications for permanent residency and citizenship will take a longer time due to other factors.

“We have to do all the necessary investigations and checks even though we are rendering a quicker service,” said Ronald Fock-Tave, director general of immigration services.

There is not a single day at the immigration services in Victoria when there is no passport or GOP application.

In terms of capacity building, Mr Bastienne said 52 staff have followed a one-year course to obtain a Certificate in Immigration Studies in collaboration with the Guy Morel Institute. They will graduate in November this year and the most successful will then continue with a Diploma in Immigration Studies.

He added that several meetings have also been organised with all the departments to work on the aspects of our current system.


Other improvement is at the Seychelles International Airport where a dedicated queue is reserved for Seychellois nationals. “We want to make life easy for everybody and now all the Schengen passport holders are automatically being given a visa for three months. Before the tourists were given a visa according to the date of return on their ticket and they had to come to the immigration to renew their visas,” he added.

PS Bastienne added that the immigration services hope to do some renovation work on the offices occupied by the Civil Status and National Identity cards sections.

“We are hoping to have a more appropriate place dedicated for civil weddings, for registration of newborns and registration of death. The national identity card section will be integrated with other services as soon as we have the resources available,” added Mr Bastienne.

He concluded by saying that “members of the public, so far, are happy with these improvements and our phone inquiries have decreased by 50%. We will continue to improve our system and deliver the best service to all.”

 

 

 

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