According to the police's preliminary calculations, the delivery time for an ordered passport is currently 14 weeks.
”"Now we have reached the bottom," says the police's chief of staff, Per Engström, who, however, sees light at the end of the passport chaos tunnel.
Anyone who applied for a passport in week 30, that is, the last week of July, can expect to wait until early November to receive their travel document, according to the information on the police website.
Per Engström, national commander for the national special incident passport, states that the bottom of the passport chaos has been reached and that things will get better from now on.
”"Because now we will get more deliveries and we will shorten these delivery times. How much is difficult to say now initially, but it will drop every month going forward by maybe 10-15 days."”
He says that the police expect that over 300,000 passports will be delivered per month in the future, which is possible because production at the manufacturer in Finland has been trimmed and that they work around the clock, weekdays and weekends.
”We are now following this production rate every week with the supplier, we haven't done that before, so that we see that they are following the delivery plans,” says Per Engström.
The police already see the previously long waiting times to come and order a new passport as largely resolved. At its worst this spring, the waiting time to apply for a passport was 30 weeks.
”"We have generally overcome this time problem. But it is still a problem in Region Öst and Region Bergslagen where the average waiting time is 10 weeks."”
According to Engström, the reason for the continued problems in those regions is lingering problems with bringing in more personnel.
”"But I know that you're working very hard on this and you're also releasing new times all the time," says Per Engström.
For all regions, the average waiting time to come and apply for a passport is now five weeks.
”"But five out of seven regions are already in normal mode with a one to two week waiting time and will continue to do so. So that's where we are. The North Region is working best and there is a waiting time of under a week."”
A normal year The police offer two million patrol times in a whole year. So far this year, the police have produced 2.2 million patrol times and will offer another approximately one million times in the fall.
”We do this to make sure that everyone has the opportunity to order a passport,” says Per Engström.
The situation is now starting to come under control so much that the special incident that the police initiated to deal with the passport chaos on a national level will soon end.
”We want to see what happens in the next few weeks, but I estimate it will be closed at the end of August.”
Passport processing will not be back to normal anytime soon, but by the fall, Per Engström believes that the problems will be completely over.
”Somewhere in October-November we should have gotten pretty, pretty close.”
Source: TT-DI.SE
