PICA to buy more immigration kiosks

The Passport, Immigration and Citizenship Agency (PICA) will be procuring more immigration kiosks as it moves Jamaica's airports to global travel standards.

The automated immigration kiosks are designed to detect people's travel history.

They primarily facilitate smoother and quicker travel, as they validate the information that you would have submitted and will give you your landing record.

Chief Executive Officer of PICA, Andrew Wynter, told JIS News that the agency will be bringing more on stream.

“We currently have 70 kiosks, 60 in Montego Bay and 10 in Kingston. We are planning to add 30 kiosks, 20 more in Montego Bay and 10 in Kingston,” Wynter said.

He explained that Jamaica is continuing its path to improve its immigration processes at the airports.

“This is part of the emerging technologies where a lot of countries now are using automated processes to deal with the normal transactions by passengers. We are going to be expanding our use of the kiosks at both our international airports,” he said.

Plans are also in place to include the country's third international airport in the queue to receive kiosks.

“I think we also have plans to put a kiosk at our Ian Fleming Airport, which is our third international airport in the island. The objective is to move as many of our passengers who meet the criteria through the kiosk. Currently, [we have] just about 50 per cent of the passengers who are arriving using the kiosk,” Wynter informed.

“Certainly, with the additional kiosks in place, we expect that more persons will be using the kiosk to be processed when they arrive in the island,” he added.

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