New Taipei City household registration offices now accept passport applications
New Taipei City’s household registration offices started to accept passport applications since April 1, 2014. From April 1 to April 3, nearly 400 people had used this new service. The Deputy Mayor of New Taipei City Youyi Hou specifically went to a household registration office to see how the new service was performed, and also visited those hard-working colleagues.
The Civil Affairs Department represented that after the Ministry of Foreign Affairs thoroughly implemented the policy of in-person passport applications on July 1 2011, people who are first-time applicants were required to be present in person for identification purposes either at the Bureau of Consular Affairs or at a household registration office. However, for those who went to an office, they still needed to deliver their passport applications to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs either with the help of other people or by themselves. This caused the whole procedure time and money consuming.
Youyi Hou expressed that after New Taipei City launched the new service, civilians who went to a household registration office in person for identification purposes could simply submit their passport applications to the office. Afterwards, the office would transfer their applications to the Bureau of Consular Affairs for processing. Once the passports were issued, the office would either notify those civilians for passport pickup or directly mail the issued passports to them, so those people did not need to go back and forth.
The Commissioner of the Civil Affairs Department Junting Jiang said that there were 39 service locations in total among the 18 New Taipei City’s household registration offices which all provided this new service. There would be approximately 60,000 people benefiting from it, and about NT$18,000,000 could be saved (the cost of being processed with the help of travel agencies was NT$300 for each application). People could receive their passports only within six to seven days.
The department indicated that teenage citizens of 14 years old and under and New Taipei City residents of 14 years old and above who are first-time applicants were all welcomed to apply for their passports at New Taipei City’s household registration offices.
“Since the new service launched, it had been incredibly welcomed by civilians, and many people made inquiries about it; moreover, other city governments all showed their interests by asking about the details of this new service and how it was executed,” said the Civil Affairs Department.