The Department of Immigration and Citizenship Services has announced that more than 1,000 passports have been printed and are now ready for collection at centers across the country.

In a statement released by the Department, officials confirmed that passport printing has resumed following several weeks of operational disruptions.

According to the Department’s spokesperson, Pasqually Zulu, efforts are currently focused on clearing a significant backlog of applications that accumulated during the suspension period, although demand for passports remains high.

Zulu noted that one of the major challenges has been data migration, particularly the transfer of applicant information from the previous service provider, Technobrain, to the new system managed by E-Tech.

He said this process has been complicated by a system breach that affected data integrity.