The number of Wyndham residents waiting to become Australian Citizens has decreased substantially following a major push by Wyndham City.
Almost 7,000 residents can now officially call Australia home after Wyndham City substantially increased its Citizenship Ceremonies to deal with a backlog of applicants, primarily due to several years of Covid-related restrictions.
From January to the end of April, Wyndham City has delivered 25 Citizenship Ceremonies including three ‘Super Ceremony Days’, where for the first time, 500 residents were invited to be conferred at each ceremony.
Over these 25 ceremonies, 6,926 residents were conferred in the first four months.
Wyndham City Mayor Cr Susan McIntyre said that at the end of 2022 Wyndham City had more than 5,000 residents awaiting Australian Citizenship conferrals.
“We understand how important citizenship is to our community and we recognised that the wait time was a significant issue. So, we responded to that need to ensure that citizenship ceremonies happen promptly.,” Cr McIntyre said.
“By the end of June 2023, Council will have delivered 32 ceremonies, inviting 8,560 Wyndham residents to be conferred as Australian Citizens. We are thrilled with this outcome and welcome our new Australian Citizens to Wyndham.”
“Over the past months we have used three Council venues for ceremonies including Wyndham Civic Centre, Encore Events Centre and the Wyndham Cultural Centre.”
“Ceremonies are held on weekdays and weekends.”
The next ceremony day will be held on Monday, 19 June during Refugee Week at Encore Events Centre at 11am.
