The number of people applying for passports nearly doubled after the Executive Yuan on Thursday last week announced that the nation’s borders would be reopened on Thursday next week, the Bureau of Consular Affairs said yesterday.
In addition to waiving the quarantine requirement for all inbound travelers, the new COVID-19 policy is to allow Taiwanese travel agencies to organize overseas tour groups, which have been banned since March 2020.
Airlines, including China Airlines, EVA Airways and Starlux Airlines, have announced that they are to resume flights to Japan and other destinations or launch new flight services after the borders are reopened.
Photo: Lo Pei-te, Taipei Times
Bureau deputy head Chen Shang-yu (陳尚友) told a weekly news conference at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Taipei that about 1.74 million passports were issued in 2019.
That number plummeted to 316,000 in 2020 and to 233,000 last year due to the COVID-19 pandemic, Chen said.
This year, 386,000 passports had been issued as of last month, he said.
Since the government announced that the borders would reopen on Thursday next week, the number of passport applications handled daily has nearly doubled, he added.
The bureau processed about 4,800 passport applications on Monday last week, up from an average of 3,000 per day over the past two years, Chen said, adding that the number jumped to 5,800 on Monday.
An average of 5,300 passport applications were handled per day in the past week, he said.
“We have prepared in advance, including increasing the number of personnel, opening more counters and ensuring that materials needed to produce passports are in place,” Chen said. “There is indeed a dramatic increase in applications for passports, but it is within our estimates.”
Some have complained about the long waiting times they have experienced while submitting their visa applications at the bureau and Chen said that statistics showed that as many as 180 people would be waiting during peak hours.
The bureau has 14 counters to process passport applications, which can handle 20 to 30 applications per hour, he said.
The peak time for passport applications is likely to fall at the end of December, in January and during the winter school break, Chen said, adding that people who are scheduled to travel overseas during this period should submit their applications ahead of time.
To shorten the waiting time, travelers are advised to fill application forms online and set up an appointment to complete applications at the bureau, he said.
Those who are filing passport applications for the first time can take advantage of the one-stop service at household registration offices nationwide or authorize relatives, colleagues, friends or travel agencies to file applications on their behalf, Chen said.
The bureau and its four other branch offices accept passport applications until 8pm every Wednesday.
The bureau also has a Line account (@boca.tw) where people can check travel alerts in other nations, and register their contact information with the nation’s embassies and representative offices while overseas.
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