L'Orient Today

Passport renewals will soon be available without prior appointments, General Security head Abbas Ibrahim indicated on Friday as he announced that his security body would “cancel the [passport renewal appointment booking] platform within a month.” Waiting times for appointments on the platform exceeded a year as “the demand for passports exceeded [General Security’s] technical capacity” amid shortages of blank travel documents. General Security announced earlier this month that it will begin reissuing biometric passports after a monthslong hiatus, while Ibrahim announced that as of Feb.15 travel documents will be issued at the pre-crisis rate after the resolution of a financing issue that engendered the yearlong queues.