The head of the Kabul Passport Office has asked for patience from thousands of Afghans waiting for docu-ments that would let them leave the country as large crowds continue to gather outside, a month after the of-fice suspended operations.
As winter closes in and eco-nomic crisis deepens in the wake of the abrupt withdrawal of foreign aid after the Taliban takeover of Afghanistan in August, the crowds around the biggest passport issuing centre in the country underline the desperate desire of large numbers of citizens to leave.
“We have done our best to re-open the office but we are still facing some equipment short-ages,” passport office head Alam Gul Haqqani told Reuters in an interview on Sunday.
Last month the office was forced to close after equip-ment used for issuing biomet-ric documents broke down under the pressure of processing thousands of applications a day but demand has built steadily.Even though the office has been closed for weeks, hun-dreds of people still gather outside the fortified compound clutching plastic document files, regularly beaten back from the crash barriers by Taliban security forces.
“I am sure the office will re-start and we will fulfil all appli-cations,” Haqqani said. “I as-sure the nation that no-one will leave our office with any reason to be upset.” He appealed to people to stay away until the office is opera-tional again.
“I am really sorry about this, I am upset because people are facing hardship. They’re wast-ing their money and standing here uselessly,” Haqqani said.“The office is closed, our sys-tems are not operational.”
A number of provincial pass-port offices are still open and officials in Kabul are process-ing around 2,000-3,000 pass-ports from these offices each day, he said, but it was still unclear when the Kabul office would reopen.—Agencies
