Here is what happened.
In 2019, the Michael Pintard and The FNM changed the rules at the Passport Office. Before that, when you went to renew your passport, the office checked your documents carefully. They looked at your birth certificate, your citizenship papers, and everything else needed to make sure you are who you say you are. That is how the system is supposed to work.
The FNM took all of that away. Their Cabinet made a decision that said all you needed to renew a passport was your old passport, a photo, a form, and your NIB smart card. That was it. No real checks. No deep look into your documents. The Passport Office could not do its job properly because the FNM tied its hands.
So what happened? People who got passports they were never entitled to were able to walk in and renew them with no questions asked. The fraud got deeper and nobody caught it because the FNM removed the safeguards that were there to catch it.
When this PLP government came in, we put new leadership at the Passport Office. That new leadership did a full review and found what the FNM’s policy had done. We scrapped the FNM’s weak rules right away. We brought back the full checks. Today, a new passport goes through eight stages of review. A renewal goes through at least six. The system is working the way it should.
And because the system is working now, we are catching the fraud. The Passport Office has sent 98 cases to the police. People have been charged. Cases are before the courts. That is what a serious government does.
Let the Bahamian people be clear on the facts. The FNM made it easy. We found it. We stopped it. And we are making sure the people responsible pay for it.
The only question left is this: why did Michael Pintard and the FNM make it so easy for people to get passports they had no right to? Please see the document of the Cabinet Paper by the FNM in 2019:
