Hon. Kajwang : ‘ Kenyan passports to have international integrity and respect’

by Kassfm London.

The Kenya High Commission in London yesterday launched, for the first time a passport issuing facility. Hon. Otieno Kajwang  Kenya’s Immigration ministry and accompanied by his senior officials from Nairobi, declared the official launch in the inaugural speech read to over 50 guests who had turned up to witness the event.  Mr.Addison Chebukaka the deputy high commissioner started the programme, at the chancery, by welcoming guests and introducing Mr.Ngare Waweru, the twelfth high commissioner of Kenya to the court of St.James. The speeches were aired live via kassfm International London. Later Hon.Kajwang talked to kassfm London and the following are excerpts from the interview. Kajwang leaves this morning to Washington.

Kass London: Honorable Kajwang welcome to London. 

Kajwang: Thank you very much kassfm International London. I am glad meeting you. 

Kass London: Why has this launch happens this time and not before. Has it come out a little bit late? 

Kajwang: yes, this is something that we should have done long, long time ago. This because of time often time it takes for people to renew their passports and sometimes the loss they have to suffer when they are going for business meetings or sometimes when going for interviews and all of a sudden you find that your passport is about to expire and you don’t have enough pages on it and yet you want to replace it quickly so that you meet the deadlines which becomes a problem. It can take two to three months before your passport back home is processed and get back to you. So this is something that has been on going and we decided as a ministry that our need is really to deal with the need and the need was that we replace passports quickly on application. That basically what we have decided to come here and we are proceeding to Washington to launch a similar facility.  

KassLondon: Could this advancement be attributable to the success of coalition government?  

Kajwang: You may call it so, it has happened during the coalition but it really depends on making a decision and moving with it. It isn’t a very expensive thing. It isn’t outside this world. It is something that could be done with a deliberate effort and I think you can give it to our ministry that we decided to meet this need and we moved towards it and it is good that it has happened. 

Kass London: As the minister of immigration, this is a great initiative, is this likely to go down as your greatest legacy?  

Kajwang: There are many that I’d like to leave .This is one of them. I can tell you that at the end of the year we may be in Berlin to deal with continental Europe and we may be in New York to deal with a larger Kenyan community there. We are also moving even at home to other places. People thought Garissa was not the place to issue passports we are now issuing them. There are no issues. People thought we couldn’t go to Eldoret we are there. We are soon in Embu, Nyeri and Kisii.  So we just want to clear the myth that getting a passport is something very mysterious and very difficult. It can be done especially with the help of Information Technology which helps us to see your application as you lodged it whenever it is.  

Kass London:  Kajwang, on the issues of security on the Kenyan passport there were concerns and fears that it could easily be tampered with. How true is that?  

Kajwang: Actually we have actually improved security passport a great deal. If you look at the new passport we have just issued, it is much more complex in terms of the security features and in terms of how it is manufactured. But it is much more expensive to try to copy it. I think it will not be very easy to try to tamper with it without making it very obvious that you have tampered with. Even the way the photographs are made there is one that is obvious and one that is kind of an image and there is one that you can only see under the light which your ordinary eyes can not see. Those very high security that are very complex. We are going to go biometric in our passport, where it is going to require your thump print, image in a chip inside the passport and it would be much more difficult to alter those features because you will not even be able to see them. We hope that by the end of the year we will be issuing complete passport with complete biometric with the chip with information on the face of the passport also contained in the chip. It will take so much money to tamper with it.  

Kass London. The new UK coalition government is reversing  a biometric project  based on the fact that  its a huge  investment why would the Kenyan government go ahead to invest on theirs? 

Kajwang: We have looked at it. It is not quite very, very expensive. In any event, you know Kenyans pay for the passport and right now I think we pay about 4500 shillings per passport. We are beginning to feel that with our complete biometric passport a Kenyan with part with ten thousands shillings and that should cover the cost. That is not a very huge investment, but at the same time it is a huge. The fact is that integrity of the Kenyan passport will be much more respected. You will not be subjected to so much inquiry. Anybody holding a Kenyan passport will be quite authentic and it can be machine read and can confirm what is there and what is in the cheap. We make it a really good passport internationally, not only for Africa. There are few countries that have gone that way yet.  

Kass London. You did mention in your speech about dual citizenship. If dual means two then that means Kenyan would be limited to two countries. Some countries are now issuing their nationals three or four citizenships. Will Kenya most likely go that direction?  

Kajwang: I agree with you. The word dual citizen actually means you should be holding two citizenships at the same time. In fact, that is the direction that we should have gone. But the way we have put is that while in you get a new citizenship any time you come back home we treat  you as a Kenyan which means that in text when we write now the immigration Act  afresh  the rules will be like if you come home and you use Kenyan passport it is ok. We will not treat you as a foreigner. But basically what it means is that if you are forced to loose your Kenyan citizenship because the law in another country may insist that you loose your citizenship or kind of forced to renounced citizenship then when you come back you will be able to regain it by merely applying. But even like as it is now in Europe if they were to give you the citizenship and they don’t require you to renounce your citizenship then you will have two passports and you can use them interchangeably.  

Kass London : Kajwang, Kenya is preparing for the referendum  in  August.In your opinion , is there a  likely hood that the yes  versus no debates  could  juxtaposed political personalities and constitutional review content?  

Kajwanj: We hope that Kenyans will be able to separate the constitutional review issues from political personalities. This is because it is not really a personality thing. It is not that somebody will benefit from the review. It should not happen that way. What is important is that this is a review that was necessary coming has come too late. It should have actually happened 20 years ago. It is in the interest of the country that we can deal with some of these things that have bothered us great deal. Things like governance, devolution of resources and such kind of things, including human rights. This document, I think has tried to deal with those issues. I wished that the debate was on that because then that we would all be agreeing that the new constitutional proposal is much superior to the one that we have. But unfortunately the debate has been who is on the other side, who is likely to benefit from this debate and who is likely to loose from this debate.  

Kass London: On Madaraka Day the President issued a warning to hate-speech propagators. In this course of the referendum, was this more a reference to the political elite?

Kajwang: Well, you know this constitution the real aim is that it should bring harmony. It should bring peace. It should bring progress. It was not intended that the new constitution should bring hatred and division. The problem with us politician is that we take positions not on the real issues. We take positions on other issues altogether and in order to win, we either we try to persuade and if we can’t we try to bring fear then we cut you down with a lot hate-speech about your nationality, ethnicity and so on. And  I think we are coming from that, only the other day we almost destroyed our country because and we deliberately tried to move out of that and we would be very afraid to that this debate could snowballed into that kind of confrontation. But it is not necessary, it is not in the interest of anybody even to those who say yes or No. and I think if we recognize this constitution debate is good for us as a country even if it is not what you really wanted because I know myself many things that I wanted to but I did not get. But I said well, it is better than where we are now. I am ready to go by it. I think there is anything in that constitution that can personally hurt anybody or hurt any ethnic group. 

KassLondon. Do you think the referendum will pass? 

Kajwang: Well, I have a strong feeling that it will go through. We would have wished that it was unanimous and all of us were singing the same song and that all of us will celebrate the new dispensation because it is something that we have sought for a long time. But it seems like that is not the case. There will be losers and gainers which is not very desirable but it will pass. It will not pass with the majority I would have wanted. Because the rules of the game are fifty plus one and I think it will pass. 

Kass London. Thank you hon. Kajwang for talking to us. We look forward to talking to us again.  

Kajwang: Thank you very much kassfm London.