The Colombian Foreign Ministry suspended for up to one year the obligation to change the passport when a child turns 7 or when a person reaches the age of majority. This decision was made by the high demand for this document to leave the country after overcoming the peaks of the coronavirus pandemic, official sources reported this Thursday.
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In a statement, the Foreign Ministry explained that the measure to suspend this obligation is due to the fact that “It is a public and well-known fact that the current demand for passports has increased, more than proportionally, for which it is necessary to have an immediate solution that allows Colombian citizens to facilitate their mobility“.
It also details that this measure also aims to help parents who need to travel abroad with their children and for this it was necessary to have an updated passport.
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The demand for passports, a document that is processed before the Colombian Foreign Ministry, shot up a couple of months ago due to the blocking of the process that was registered especially in 2020 due to the pandemic, which originated long lines and protests from users because they could not make the appointment to manage the passport.
Between June and November 2021, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs doubled its passport issuance capacity from 64,000 to 140,000 per month, which has not been enough.
The vice president and chancellor, Marta Lucía Ramírez, said in mid-November that the Ministry of Foreign Relations issued 136,000 passports a year. In 2019, the number increased to 334,000 and in 2020, which was the year of the pandemic, the number dropped to about 135,000 passports.
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“Comparing 2020 with 2019, we had a shortage of 200,000 passports, added to the fact that in 2020 the passports that had been issued in 2010. In such a way that, with the shortage that we had of 200,000 passports, plus all those that had to be renewed, we are talking about about one million 200 thousand passports that we accumulated due to the pandemic“Ramírez explained.
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EFE
