By JASMIN BONIMY, Guardian Staff Reporter, jasmin@nasguard.com

Former Minister of Foreign Affairs Fred Mitchell is calling for the passport issuing system to be revamped, as angry crowds of applicants again spent hours towing long lines outside the Passport Office on Thompson Boulevard.

More than a hundred applicants had reportedly been waiting outside the Passport Office yesterday morning. The line stretched from the office's entrance to its northern wall shortly after 6 a.m.

"I wanted to come down here and see it for myself," said Mitchell. "But clearly this is a process issue and I think it might be worth it for the public officials to come down and have a look at what the issues are, to see what they can do to alleviate the problem."

When The Guardian arrived on the scene for the second time this week, frustrated locals were once again waiting outside the Passport Office. Shortly after 11 a.m., a group of roughly 40 people were prevented from going inside the already packed waiting room. Dozens of children, including infants, were also left outside in the care of their parents.

Officials from the Passport Office again refused to speak with The Guardian yesterday afternoon, referring the reporter to "the proper channels" at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

However, repeated calls to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs headquarters were not returned up to press time on Thursday.

An applicant, who would only speak on condition of anonymity, expressed her frustration.

"I really thought we would have gotten over this stage in life, when we have to be taking the kids out of bed at 4 o'clock in the morning to come and get a passport," said the mother as she waited outside with her 10- and eight-year-old daughters. "I had to bring two of my kids to sit here all morning just to get a passport - but if it's the sacrifice I have to make, and I want to be able to travel and my kids to travel - I have to have patience."

The obviously drained woman said she had been in the line since the early morning hours.

"I was out here since 5 a.m. and out here was in chaos this morning," she explained. "I am very angry because here it is we haven't had breakfast as yet, and we cannot go inside because of the crowd. The sky gets overcast every now then, and it might rain.

"They didn't allow people to go inside to use the bathrooms because they must [have] thought I would have slipped through the ropes," she continued. "So we had to just hold it in until my girls wanted to go then I had to take them to the vacant lot to use the bathroom."

Meanwhile, Mr. Mitchell added that he believed alterations to the passport processing system must be made in order to avoid the chaos that has been experienced in recent weeks.

"I suggest that you need to have a booking system," said Mitchell. "You need to tell people what their actual waiting time is. There also needs to be an investment into additional equipment and additional man power has to be hired. It also seems to me that in the short term we might look at extending the existing passports for a period of six months until we get through the summertime period."

According to Mitchell, who also serves as the Opposition spokesperson for the Public Service sector, he has received reports that new regulations implemented to accommodate the e-passport requires applicants to wait approximately 4 to 8 weeks before their travel document is issued.

"Every summer there is a rush but this is made worse by the fact that each person is now required to physically come into the office and they have to give a fingerprint and be interviewed by the person who is taking their forms," said Mitchell. "Although they can take 80 people a day - 40 seats or so at a time. I've heard they can only process seven of these applications a day. If that is so, a tremendous backlog will be developing.

"The e-passport is not required till May 2010 so we're trying to get a jump on it," he added. "But what I was thinking was in the short term, maybe what we need to do is renew the existing passport for a short period of time to get through this period, and then we take it from there. You give them an opportunity to come back and deal with the issue."

The machine readable passports (MRP), or e-passports, were officially launched on December 5 last year, a move intended to increase protection against identity theft, heighten aviation security and combat illegal immigration.

The e-passport contains biometric features, such as fingerprints, facial features and other data, imprinted on a silicone chip embedded in the passport document, and uses advanced computerized recognition techniques.

In January, government officials reported that the multi-million machine readable passport system was "working fairly well", with over 550 e-passports issued since the official launch.

The government signed an estimated $12.7 million contract with Indusa Globa to provide four systems to initiate the project. Those systems are an ePassport issuance system, a machine readable Visa system, an E-Identification issuance system (smart cards for holders of work permits, spousal permits, home owners residence permits, permanent residence), and a border control management system.