- Jasmeen Basi and Dillon Birring may not be able to take child on first holiday
A family may miss out on their dream £5,000 holiday to Egypt after the wrong photograph was put on a three-year-old’s passport.
Jasmeen Basi and Dillon Birring said they may not be able to take their two children on their first holiday abroad together after the ‘shocking’ passport blunder.
They sent off an application for their daughter Daya’s first passport and were told after several weeks that officials mistakenly swapped her photo with another child’s image.
A photo of an Asian child aged between seven and 12 had erroneously been attached instead, Mrs Basi said.
Pictured: Jasmeen Basi and Dillon Birring with their children Sofia Birring, five (left) and Daya Birring, three (right)
Mrs Basi, 34, fears she may have to stay at home with her youngest daughter
Education consultant Mrs Basi, from Southampton, Hampshire, has slammed the Passport Office for the ‘massive security breach’ and wants to know if her daughter’s image has been used on another document.
Angry Mrs Basi said: ‘It’s just shocking. What is going on? Has somebody just been careless and thought ‘that’s a brown child’ – how do you even switch two pictures?
‘Daya had never been on holiday before because she was a Covid baby so this was her first family holiday with us.
‘We were so excited and now I have had to tell her it might not happen.
‘We are still stuck in limbo – is my daughter’s picture on somebody else’s passport.’
She added that her family are ‘in limbo’ over whether they can go on their upcoming all-inclusive trip to Egypt.
Mrs Basi, 34, fears she may have to stay at home with her youngest daughter while her husband and her oldest daughter head to Sharm el Sheikh later this month.
She said her worries began to grow when Daya’s passport was taking longer than the expected three weeks and contacted the Passport Office.
The mix-up was only made apparent after repeated chasing from Mrs Basi having applied for it in December.
In January she received an email stating that all information needed had been received and it was all on track.
Still having heard nothing back and the long-awaited family get-away fast approaching, she called to check on the application and was advised to ask for it to be fast-tracked when it gets to two weeks before travel.
She did this but was then told the fast-track request had been denied with no answer given.
When she called to check, she was finally told the Passport Office had mistakenly swapped the picture.
‘It’s quite scary, especially if they can’t find my child’s picture – where has it gone?’ she said.
‘We have saved up so much for this holiday and it now means only my husband and other daughter will be able to go when in a normal situation, we would all go.
‘How have they possibly mixed it up? Does this mean my child’s picture is attached to someone’s child application?
‘How does a government agency do this?
‘We would never have booked the holiday if we knew this was going to happen. We were assured that it would only take about three weeks.’
The family say that the Passport Office mistakenly swapped a picture of three-year-old Daya with a picture of a an Asian child aged between seven and 12
She may now have to stay at home, while her husband, Mr Birring, 38, and their eldest daughter Sofia, five, enjoy the sandy beaches of Sharm El-Sheikh.
She said: ‘There’s been no acceptance that they have made this error.
‘Nobody has contacted me to say they are sorry.
‘It’s made me so angry.
‘I’ve had to go back and forth. They’ve made this massive error and done nothing.
‘It’s a massive security breach.
‘Something is amiss.
A spokesperson for the Passport Office said: ‘We are aware of Ms Basi’s travel date and are in touch with her directly regarding next steps for her application.’
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