KINGSTON, Jamaica – The Passport, Immigration and Citizenship Agency (PICA) says it will be procuring more immigration kiosks as it moves the nation’s airports to global travel standards.

According to a release on Tuesday, “the automated immigration kiosks are designed to detect people’s travel history and will primarily facilitate smoother and quicker travel, as it validates the information that one would have submitted and will give you your landing record.”

Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of PICA, Andrew Wynter, in the release, said that the agency will be bringing more kiosks 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 b²e expanding our use of the kiosks at both our international airports,” he said, indicating that 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 on the island. The objective is to move as many of our passengers who meet the criteria through the kiosk.

He noted that currently just about 50 per cent of the passengers who are arriving at the airports use the kiosks,” 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.