DIRECTOR General (DG) of Immigration and Passports Mustafa Jamal Qazi on Friday said that the backlog of passports in major cities has been cleared and that the government will now resolve the issue in the remaining cities. In a video statement, DG Qazi said that he was grateful to the citizens for showing patience, admitting that there was a delay in the delivery of the passports which the government took up as a challenge. He said that the procurement for the new printers was completed and they would arrive in Pakistan within a month, adding that the printing process would then “normalize”.
One must appreciate the head of the department for realizing the difficulties being faced by the applicants and taking necessary measures to streamline the process for issuance of new passports. In fact, the issue should not have cropped up in the first instance as all categories of applicants are charged handsomely and it was the fundamental responsibility of the department to plan and prepare for meeting the growing demand for passports. This is because the passport seekers are not only a source of income for Immigration and Passports but those visiting abroad for employment remit money back home and remittances by overseas Pakistanis are now more important than the country’s overall exports. With this in view, passport seekers should be facilitated in every respect and in fact, there was a need to bring down the delivery period to the same day for the urgent category and 2/3 days for others. The abnormal delays in issuance of passports has become a recurring issue and we hope the Director-General would, in close coordination with his own ministry and other departments, work out a strategy to prevent recurrence of the problem.
