LAHORE – Applicants of normal and urgent categories have been facing delays in issuance of passports for months due to insufficient printing capacity of the Directorate General of Immigration and Passports.

Those who have applied in normal categories are faced to wait for more than four months while urgent category applicants are getting their passports after two months.

As per official website, normal fee passport are issued after 21 working days while urgent fee passport will be issued in 05 working days.

However, the situation on the ground is entirely different as applicants are facing inordinate delays in getting their passports.

Update on duration for issuance of Passports in Pakistan

A positive development was reported a day earlier that the government has decided to procure new printing machines for passports to address the ongoing passport crisis.

The Directorate General of Passports and Immigration is reportedly preparing a requisition for procurement of the machines and will send it to the Ministry of Interior. It is anticipated that the new machines will be imported by September.

The new machines will be able to print up to 1,000 passports per hour.

If the machines are imported, it would definitely reduce the passport issuance time in the country.