Chief of Staff Alfredo Saade announced that the passport issuance agreement with the Portuguese government has been signed. The official stated that the transition process will begin after the contract with Thomas Greg expires on August 31.
"We signed with Portugal the project for the production of passport cards and their personalization. We entered the transition process. We have fulfilled our commitment; Colombia will never be left without a passport; on the contrary, we will be producers for the nations," Saade tweeted.
The chief of staff shared a page of the alliance with Portugal that reads"agreement with a foreign public law entity for cooperation and participation in the knowledge transfer process and implementation of the project for the production and personalization of passports, travel documents and visa labels of the Republic of Colombia."
The agreement was signed between the National Printing House of Portugal and the National Printing House of Colombia. President Gustavo Petro had already announced this afternoon that the document would be signed.
"The need to control data in Colombia is not a whim of the president who does not like Thomas Greg. By the way, the contract with Portugal on passports has just been signed (...) That monopoly is over because that data, according to the contract, will be transferred once we have the machines, because we didn't even have machines in the printing press, which is sad," said the head of state during an event in Santa Marta.
The mess over issuing passports
The issuance of passports has become a headache for Gustavo Petro's government and all Colombians. The executive branch has been announcing for over a year that it will change the production model by taking it away from the private firm Thomas Greg & Sons and converting it to a public model with the help of a foreign government.
Despite Saade's announcement, there are serious doubts about the capacity of the National Printing House's facilities to receive the transfer of technology and machinery from the Portuguese Mint.
According to the Foreign Ministry, the Printing Office is not technically prepared to immediately accept the change of model, as 8,000 documents are requested daily. It would take about 35 weeks of transition, so warnings remain about a potential disruption to the service.
A preventive report from the Attorney General's Office indicates that since April 30, the Foreign Ministry has known that it is unfeasible for the Printing Office to handle passport issues starting September 1, since the mere processing will take much longer than what remains. Therefore, the Ministry stated that a"declaration of manifest urgency (with Thomas Greg & Sons) was necessary to guarantee the provision of the service."
This led to the resignation of Foreign Minister Laura Sarabia, who has stated on several occasions that the Printing Office is not prepared."I hope that the decision they make is the most responsible one for the country. The important thing here is that on September 1, people continue to have passport service, regardless of whether it is done with a private operator, a contractor, or a foreign government," said Sarabia.
The Attorney General's Office opened a disciplinary investigation into outgoing Foreign Minister Sarabia, her predecessor Luis Gilberto Murill o, and the head of the presidential office, Alfredo Saade, for alleged irregularities in the issuance of passports, a scandal that has divided the government of President Gustavo Petro.
Regarding Laura Sarabia and Luis Gilberto Murillo, it is preliminarily believed that they would not have adequately structured the passport issuance process while they were in charge of the Foreign Ministry,"in addition to the fact that Murillo would have improperly used the figure of the declaration of manifest urgency issued in September 2024."
For his part, Sarabia—who for a long time served as President Petro's right-hand man at the DAPRE and as chief of staff—was allegedly guilty of disciplinary offenses after allegedly learning last April that the government's timeline for implementing its new model with the National Printing Office was unviable, as the operating conditions had not been accredited.
Meanwhile, Saade is alleged to have overstepped his authority as chief of staff by ordering members of the Foreign Ministry"to streamline the scheduling of passport issuance appointments."
