• Will not entertain any one day services until further notice
• We are hopefully trying to get this issue fixed by Wednesday (11)

By Kurulu Koojana Kariyakarawana

A backlog of several thousand passports were created within just two days as the Department of Immigration and Emigration crippled with a system malfunction last week, which is expected to continue for another couple of days. 

The department’s heavy duty computer servers had a malfunction since last Wednesday owing to a high volume of applications and appointments that arrived following the two government holidays of May 2nd and 3rd, the department sources said.   
As a result, the department announced last week that they will not entertain any one day services until further notice and the public was instructed to rely on normal service.   
When contacted, departmental Spokesperson Deputy Controller Piyumi Bandara told the Daily Mirror last evening that they are still working on the problem and it might take another couple of days for the process to be back on track.   The spokesperson said the department has encountered a problem in their system of printing the passports owing to a technical issue of scanning the new data. “We are hopefully trying to get this issue fixed by Wednesday (11) and will first address the issue of the backlog of about 3,000 one day service appointments by today and tomorrow,” she said.   

The department usually has a capacity of issuing 2,500 passports per day both under one day and normal service. However, due to this system failure the department has received about 3,000 appointments under the one day service alone during the two days of May 5th and 6th. 

 
The general public was advised yesterday to begin making appointments for this week from Wednesday (11) onwards for one day and normal service, as the priority would be given today and tomorrow only to clear the last week’s backlog.   

A departmental IT specialist team is working round the clock to bring the issue to normal, the spokesperson further said.