Panama will allow Venezuelans with expired passports to use it for procedures for six months

Panama City, Oct 3 (EFE).- The Government of Panama issued a decree that allows, for six months, Venezuelans with expired passports to use this document for various internal proceduresThe president of the Central American country, José Raúl Mulino, reported this Thursday.

«Yesterday I signed and today the authorization is being uploaded to the network so that for different procedures (…) Venezuelans can access the procedure with their expired Venezuelan passport. “That will help many people who are in Panama and who cannot, for obvious reasons, go to Venezuela to renew their document,” the president said during his weekly press conference.

Panama is one of the countries in the region that recognized the standard-bearer of the majority opposition, Edmundo González, as the winner of the presidential elections on July 28, in which the National Electoral Council (CNE) declared the re-election of Nicolás Maduro without presenting the disaggregated results, according to how it was in the schedule.

After the Venezuelan elections, both countries closed their respective diplomatic representations, and the Maduro Government maintains commercial flights with Panama suspended.

Executive Decree 188 promulgated this Thursday and which will be in force for 6 months, establishes the use as a valid document of the expired passport of Venezuelans in Panama for various procedures, from immigration to the renewal of the driver’s license.

According to the 2023 national census, 60,290 Venezuelans officially reside in Panama.

Ricardo Contreras, the coordinator of the ConVZLA Panama command, had commented this week to EFE that the biggest problem currently facing this community in Panama was “expired passports”, since the document is required along with the migration card for procedures such as renewal. driver’s license or cash a check.

Contreras, who announced that the Panamanian Government was preparing a partial solution, also criticized that the Venezuelan Government approved a resolution that does not allow access to the country with an expired passport, which he considers “absurd” since “the Constitution says that “The only thing that identifies the person is being born in Venezuela and with any valid document or not.”

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