The recent incident involving a Saudi Arabian diplomat provides us with lessons one of which we should not miss. Whatever may be said about Saudi Arabia at least their government does take steps to facilitate Muslims who wish to make the pilgrimage to Mecca, an important pillar of the Islamic religion.

Few countries can or have interest in maintaining consular offices in all 200-odd countries of the world. In fact there are only 48 diplomatic missions based in Trinidad and Tobago, almost half of them being serviced by honorary consuls. But Saudi Arabia and Venezuela have full embassies in their countries. Normally applications for visas to travel to Saudi Arabia have to be processed in Caracas.

The presence of a Saudi diplomat in Trinidad and Tobago to facilitate the granting of visas surely eases the burden on T&T pilgrims. Can we really say that our Government acts likewise? We ask this in the light of the experience of some members of the family of Mark Meredith, a former writer for the Express, whose wife and daughter, now resident in New Zealand, find that they cannot acquire machine readable passports except that they travel to London. It seems that until they complete another two years residence and become eligible for New Zealand passports, they are trapped there.

This situation is not unlike that faced by many citizens here. We do not of course accuse the Minister of National Security of deliberately deceiving citizens but his recent statements regarding the duration of the wait for new passports do confuse, if not mislead people. While we must accept that there may be a marked shortening of the duration of time for preparation of the document this can only be that interval between the formal interview by appointment and the issue of the document. But can Minister Joseph explain why some citizens continue to be given appointments well into 2011 as has been reported to us?

Yes, it is true that if an urgent need to travel arises, arrangements can be made to accelerate the process at the passport office. But this begs the question. A related problem is the reduction of the validity of the passport to five years as opposed to ten and the need to repeat the process of appointment and interview. Minister, no system devised by man can ever be error-free. At the same time surely the Government could develop a more humane one where it shows itself genuinely concerned about citizens’ welfare.