The Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade (DFAT) is increasing its staff at passport processing and call centres after a massive increase in passport applications as international travel resume after the lifting of pandemic restrictions.
Over 250 extra staff are expected to be recruited and trained in the next few weeks after the number of daily passport applications hit a record high of 16,417.
Assistant Minister for Foreign Affairs Tim Watts also revealed that the Australian Government had set up a new call centre that employed 35 staff last week to help manage the increase, with another 35 to join in within this week.
“The Minister for Foreign Affairs and I are working with DFAT to fix this, by urgently increasing numbers of processing and call centre staff as quickly as staff can be recruited and trained,” Assistant Minister Watts said.
DFAT initially received around 7,000-9,000 applications per day, but the number shot up after international borders reopened last November following the pandemic.
While Assistant Minister Watts criticised the previous government for not planning out a solution to the issue, he admitted that the increase in passport applications wouldn’t be easily fixed as there will be an expected surge at the end of the year.
“There is a significant backlog of applications that have built up over the previous month and, unfortunately, we are expecting a significant surge to continue in applications,” he said.
“We expect that putting on this staff now will see a gradual improvement in the issue, particularly over this week and next week in the call centres. And then over time, we’ll work to get that backlog in processing applications down.”
Assistant Minister Watts said he would continue to work with the DFAT to ensure adequate resources were delivered in the future.
Source: Government News. Content has been edited for style and clarity.