How to get a passport in PNG?

There are basically two options:

1) Normal channels.
2) The backdoor.

A quick few facts about the passport situation in Papua New Guinea at present:

- Many folks have been waiting for over 12 months to have their applications processed.
- If your application gets lossed, which is not uncommon, both the application and associated fees need to be resent to Department of Foreign Affairs – the folks basically looking after passport applications.
- The drum at the moment is that passports are not being processed due to the unavailability of passport book blanks – as these need to come from Fiji (this was reported in the Media recently).
- Locals have been known to miss out on overseas travel even after having purchased a plane ticket and submitted their passport application well in advance.
- This whole passports thing is reflective and microcosmic of good old fashioned PNG corruption and inefficiency.
- Government Ministers and Secretaries come and go and each attempt to improve the situation by undertaking departmental restructures and reorganisation.
- The fact remains passport application in PNG for the locals is an horrendous and intimidating experience.

So…

If one is a Papua New Guinean in need of a Passport then one has no option other than to go through this painful processes and keep the fingers crossed that only a few things fuck up along the way.

But folks… that’s if one decides (or needs) to go through the official and legal channels!

And then there was the Backdoor!!

Yep… ladies and gentlemen the infamous (but necessary) backdoor!

And if one is lucky to find a backdoor then the following is the standard process:

1) Submit a passport application – does not have to be exactly like the proper application -as long as it resembles an application.
2) Give it to someone that knows a “backdoor”.
3) Low and behold… within a couple of hours (at the most) – you will be holding a genuine, legal, the real Mckoy PNG passport in your hands.
4) I forgot to mention – it does cost a few bucks by the way!! Backdoors don’t work for nothing you know!!

So what does a law abiding PNG citizen do when confronted with the urgent need to get hold of a passport? Does one wait 12 months and then fortnight in and fortnight out go knocking on the door of the passports office – that’s if one is lucky enough to live in Morebsy – only to get told stories and lies and excuses.

Or does one find a backdoor and speed up the process a little (well a lot actually)?

Certainly an interesting question and food for thought for those that are waiting and also for those that have corruptly jumped the queue.

As a wise man once said: “A man’s got to do what a man’s got to do”

All jokes aside – a great place to start to find out about the passport application process in Papua New Guinea is to go straight to the PNG Passports Act.