Two people hold their Lebanese passports. (Credit: AFP)
BEIRUT — General Security will stop using its online platform to grant passport appointments "within a month," after which applications may be filed without appointments, General Security head Abbas Ibrahim said Friday in a statement published by the state-run National News Agency.
"We will cancel the platform within a month," said General Ibrahim. Afterward, applicants can renew their passports in the "normal way," he added, via filing paperwork at a General Security center without prior appointment.
"The demand for passports has exceeded our technical capacity," he said.
Since the beginning of the economic crisis in 2019, demand for passports has increased, leading to a shortage of travel documents. The online platform was set up because of high demand, but appointments suffered long delays, with many applicants waiting a year or more for their passports to be renewed.
The administration had to suspend the online appointment process last May for more than a month, mainly due to the delay in payment by the government to the company responsible for printing the booklets.
General Security announced that applications for biometric passports started being accepted again as of Tuesday, Jan. 17., in all its regional centers and its Public Relations Department.