First report: Securing an appointment to obtain a passport has become an almost impossible task in recent years, since the COVID-19 pandemic. In the Population and Immigration Authority bureaus in central Israel, there are almost no available appointments, and those who urgently need a passport are forced to trek across the country in search of a less sought-after bureau where they can receive service within a reasonable timeframe.
And if that is not enough to further strain the nerves of Israelis planning to travel abroad, a malfunction in one of the personalization machines for biometric passports is now causing additional delays. Passports are printed as raw materials at the Government Printer and arrive at the Population and Immigration Authority, where a special machine stamps them with the details of the citizens who submitted passport applications.
The waiting time to receive a passport, which until recently stood at four to six weeks, has lengthened to about eight weeks, meaning approximately two months from the time of submission.
The Population and Immigration Authority is attempting to overcome the malfunction, and to that end, an expert technician was flown to Israel from Germany who is working to repair the machine. However, as of now, the malfunction has not yet been resolved, and there is concern that waiting times will lengthen even further, precisely when Israelis are already required to wait long weeks to receive a passport.
A., who has been waiting for a passport for several weeks, said that "I saw complaints on Facebook about passports being delayed and I thought it was just a random matter, but it is worrying to find out that this is a malfunction. It took me a long time anyway to find a reasonable appointment in my area, and now it is worrying that this could take another two months, and that is even without there being a war here, God forbid."
The director-general of the Population and Immigration Authority does not commit to an immediate solution. "There is a malfunction in one of the machines, and a technician arrived here from Germany who is working to solve it," he says. "I hope that within three weeks we will overcome the backlog. Usually, passport issuance takes six weeks, and now it stands at eight weeks."