The UK Border Agency, in partnership with its commercial partner Gerrys, launched on Monday a premium lounge service at its Visa Application Centre (VAC) in Karachi. The Gerry's premium lounge in Karachi is the luxurious, dedicated and convenient lounge for UK visa applicants, which provides a personalised service for the submission of their applications and passports for visa processing.
The lounge offers a ready to use service with no prior appointment required from its call centre. Applicants can take advantage of the facility upon arrival at the UK Visa centre. It is a stylish and dedicated lounge, fast, convenient, comfortable application submission and complimentary snacks, tea and coffee and free SMS alerts on the status of a customer's application.
Mandy Ivemy, the UK Border Agency Regional Manager for Pakistan while briefing the media here said the UK Border Agency was committed to providing a first class visa service to Pakistanis. "With the opening of the Karachi premium lounge we now have the premium lounge service available in all Pakistan VACs. We have also updated our visa services website, including specific pages for visa applicants in Pakistan and launched a priority Business Select Scheme for our corporate customers who send employees to the UK on business."
Francis Campbell, British Deputy High Commissioner while speaking on the occasion said: "We are delighted with the opening of the premium lounge service in Karachi." This will further enhance UK Border Agency's commitment to provide top class service to the business community in Pakistan and contribute in achieving the UK government's objective of increasing bilateral trade between the UK and Pakistan, he added.
"In 2010 the UK Border Agency received close to 100,000 applications from Pakistani nationals, and the majority of these were processed within our published customer service standards," he said adding "we continue to build on this service in 2011, with more than 90 percent of non-settlement applications processed within 10-15 days."
To a question, the British Deputy High Commissioner said that Pakistan was an important trade partner of the UK and the current bilateral trade volume between the two countries was around 1.9 billion pound sterling. He was optimistic that the bilateral trade volume between Pakistan and the UK would increase to 2.5 billion pound sterling by the year 2015.
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