Posta to distribute 50,000 passports, eyes logbooks

Postmaster General Dan Kagwe. FILE PHOTO | NMG

By KEVIN ROTICH
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Summary

• About 50,000 passports will be distributed by the Postal Corporation of Kenya (PCK) to Kenyans amid backlog cases at Immigration caused by Covid-19’s disruptions.
• Postmaster-General Dan Kagwe told the Business Daily that they will be distributed to individuals at their doorsteps regardless of where they are.
• This will be different from the usual in-person passport collections at Nairobi's Nyayo House, the Department of Immigration’s regional offices as well as Huduma Centres.

About 50,000 passports will be distributed by the Postal Corporation of Kenya (PCK) to Kenyans amid backlog cases at Immigration caused by Covid-19’s disruptions.

Postmaster-General Dan Kagwe told the Business Daily that they will be distributed to individuals at their doorsteps regardless of where they are.

This will be different from the usual in-person passport collections at Nairobi's Nyayo House, the Department of Immigration’s regional offices as well as Huduma Centres.

“Now, we are doing distributions of all the passports. We have already got about 50, 000 that we are distributing now,” Mr Kagwe said.

Mr Kagwe added that Posta is piloting distribution of driving licences and logbooks.

“There is a backlog of about 150,000 drivers’ licences and logbooks,” he added.

He noted that they also are increasing distributions of the Kenya Medical Supplies Authority’s (Kemsa) medicines.

This comes at a time when an increased uptake of digital forms of communications such as email, SMS and social media apps has led to a decline in use of physical letters as a means of correspondence.

Latest statistics show that in the three months to March 2020, the number of letters sent locally dropped by 19.3 percent to 8.5 million from 10.5 million in the quarter ended December 2019.

In September, PCK said it seeks to review employment terms for its top managers as the cash-strapped state-owned firm strives to cut costs and improve efficiency.

Those to be affected include general managers for various services including mail, payments, courier, finance, supply chain corporate communication, government businesses and customer, human resource and administration.

Others are those in charge of ICT, operations, regional postmasters, business development and strategy and corporate Secretary.

The Post Master General added that they will be put under three-year renewable contracts, which will be based on performance, away from the current permanent and pensionable terms.

The move comes after ICT principal secretary Esther Koimett said a Cabinet memorandum has been developed to restructure the loss-making parastatal and transform it as an emerging e-commerce business.