Passport Marathon

Minister of Interior Moshe Arbel ran a Passport Marathon today, and will be running it for the next month. The backlog of people waiting for passports, and other documents (identity cards and the like) has gotten so bad, it can take several months before a person might get an appointment, often with no slots available for months on end, in addition to bots snapping up whatever appointments do become available and then selling them.

Arbel came up with a plan to open the Population Registry offices in the four big cities and make passport applications available with no previous appointment - ie back to the way it used to be before the appointment system went into place with far longer hours every day for the coming month. So far, on the first alone of this campaign, over 3300 applications have been processed. I dont know what the daily count normally is but it isnt even close to that. Lines are long and patience is required, but at least if you need a passport or whatnot you can now hope to get it.

Good job, Minister Arbel.

I would like to see something similar being made available in smaller cities. Maybe it isnt necessary everywhere but lots of mid-size cities could use a similar option. Maybe once he sees the success of this program in the big cities he will consider expanding it, though maybe they dont need to go until 10pm every day in the smaller cities...

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