About a tenth (6205) of applicants initially submitted via the “standard” service, but paid to upgrade to “urgent” after concern it would not meet their travel deadline.
This comes after the DIA issued an apology for the “sharp increase” in the average time it takes for a passport to be issued.
With an urgent adult application costing $412, double that of a standard ($206), the DIA received an additional $1,278,230 from applications that otherwise would have been standard ones.
The urgent application stream, which takes three working days to process, is reportedly unaffected by delays.
While there are several reasons travellers may choose to pay to speed up their processing, the backlog is contributing to this.
One traveller told the Herald they felt compelled to pay the extra fees or lose money on cancelling overseas travel.
“I had to upgrade to ‘urgent’ to make sure the kids can come on holiday later this month,” they said.
They received the expedited passports within 24 hours of paying for the upgrade.
After contacting the passport service, the family were given the option of either paying for the urgent service or withdrawing applications for a full refund.
Adrian Jarvis, General Manager Services and Access for the DIA’s Te Tari Taiwhenua said that the number of late applicatons for urgent passports was higher than usual.
“Usually, we would expect the proportion of urgent passports issued to be between 10% and 15%. There will always be someone who discovers their passport has expired, gone missing or got damaged right before they travel.”
For comparisson for the whole of 2023 17 per cent of applications were via the “urgent” stream and just 3 per cent asked to have standard applications upgraded to urgent at a later stage.
As for charges, Jarvis said that the costs of urgent passport applications were determined by ministers of the New Zealand Cabinet.
“DIA is obligated to charge fees that reflect the actual cost of delivering this important service.”
The department said the backlog was due to a systems upgrade in March, and additional resources were being made available to clear the backlog.
“DIA expected and planned for the system upgrade to temporarily affect productivity and passport timeframes, but the effect was sharper and more prolonged than expected,” read a statement from the Department last week.
More staff had been deployed to resolve any production issues and help address delays.
“Reducing wait times is a priority for the department,” said Maria Robertson, DCE service delivery and operations, adding that the gap between processing applications was narrowing.
Staff were “running weekend and overtime shifts to increase processing capacity” to clear what was described as a short-term backlog.
At present, the biggest delays in passport processing were due to passport photos not meeting guidelines, or correspondence with applicants being left unanswered.
Advice to travellers waiting on delayed passports
Although just over half of passports are being dispatched in under three weeks, the DIA warns processing might take about 10 weeks.
However, the advice to customers applying for passports remains the same:
Travellers needing a new passport should give as much time as possible before travel, and allow for delivery and wait times given via the application web portal.
One of the most common factors delaying applications is passport photos. Applicants are advised to read the full guidance on pictures because unsuitable photos will extend processing times.
Another common factor for delay is waiting on applicants to submit additional information. Travellers waiting on passports should check back on passport applications regularly, and respond promptly to requests from the DIA.
There are over 9000 passport applications awaiting further information from the customer, says the DIA.
