Immigration: Passport Services to Stabilize by Next Week

Maldives Immigration has provided a new timeline, stating that the new passport stock will be received and services will return to normal by next week.

In August this year, Maldives Immigration implemented significant changes to its passport issuance policy to manage existing inventory. These measures were introduced following delays in receiving new passport stocks due to technical issues with the passport booklet printing machines.

Maldives Immigration has announced that the technical issues affecting the printing machinery of its German passport supplier—which has provided the service since 2016—have now been resolved, though the repairs took significantly longer than initially anticipated.

Consequently, the agency noted that due to difficulties in supplying the stock by the previously established deadline, the new shipment is now expected to arrive by the end of September.

However, Maldives Immigration has informed the media that the new passport stock is expected to arrive next week, at which point operations will return to normal.

Under the measures introduced in response to the current situation, individuals in the Maldives seeking to renew expired passports will no longer be issued new booklets. Instead, authorities have decided to extend the validity of existing passports until June 30, 2027.

Immigration has stated that this service will be provided free of charge, with no fees involved.

Furthermore, a decision has been made to issue "emergency passports" to first-time applicants traveling for short durations to countries frequently visited by Maldivians, such as India and Sri Lanka.

This is an eight-page machine-readable passport issued for a one-year duration, fully compliant with International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO) standards. These emergency passports will be issued free of charge.