The Director General of General Security Abbas Ibrahim promised on Thursday that the passport crisis will be "gradually resolved from next October." (Credit: Anwar Amro/AFP)
BEIRUT — “The passport crisis will be gradually resolved from next October,” the Director General of General Security Abbas Ibrahim promised on Thursday, as some Lebanese find themselves stranded in the country due to heavy delays in the process of applying for or renewing their passport.
Here’s what we know:
• In April, General Security announced that the number of passports it had available to issue had dwindled, even as requests for new passports had increased tenfold over the past two years. Appointments for passports and passport renewals were therefore suspended for one month.
• But even prior to the suspension of appointment applications, appointments granted were generally months in the future, and severe electricity outages and fuel shortages forced many Lebanese to wait for hours, sometimes overnight, to apply for or receive their passports.
• In mid-June, General Security relaunched its online platform for making appointments to obtain or renew passports, after suspension of over a month. Currently, there is a months-long backlog in appointments for passport renewal.
• However, Ibrahim did not specify how the passport crisis will be resolved by October, and what exactly will be done regarding the backlog of applications.