Passport applicants in and outside the country especially in Dubai and Abu Dhabi are facing severe problems as the Pakistani Consulate in Dubai and Directorate of Immigration and Passport (I&P) are taking a long time to deliver them. Pakistani expat communities in Dubai are facing problems due to the delay in processing of passports by the Pakistan Consulate in Dubai.
"People have been waiting for months to receive their new passports and many are unable to get their UAE visas renewed due to delay in getting passports," Muhammad Ali, a Pakistani in Dubai said while talking to Business Recorder on telephone. "We are paying for normal delivery date DHS 151 and for urgent DHS 251, which includes 40 DHS benevolent fee. Under the law normal passports are to be processed in 70 days and urgent in 25 days. But a large number of people have been waiting to get their passports for the last three months with most having applied for urgent passports", he said.
Passport applicants visit the Consulate on daily basis but the response is "wait for 15 days more". This delay is causing the Pakistanis DHS 100 equal to Rs 2,710 per day as a fine to UAE government, a Pakistani waiting for his passport complained to this correspondent.
Every day hundreds of people visit Pakistan Embassy in Abu Dhabi and its Consulate in Dubai but return empty handed. They wait in hot weather outside the Consulate as there is no proper waiting room. The same situation is evident outside the Islamabad office. An applicant standing outside the G-10 passport office told this scribe that he had applied for a passport two months ago but he is yet to receive a passport, he said.
Among passport applicants are intended Hajj pilgrims, students, businessmen, people with job letters and they all have repeatedly urged the government to take notice of the delay in issuance of passports and take immediate measures in this regard to facilitate the people.
An official source said that under the law the urgent passport would be delivered within five working days while ordinary passport would be delivered within 12 working days. "Thousands of ordinary passports are pending due to out of order printing machines and shortage of passport book because of financial crises in I&P", he said. He said that I&P is a revenue generating department and it is generating revenue of Rs 14 billion for the national exchequer. "If the Ministry of Finance had issued fund to I&P on time the current situation would not have been occurred", he said.
The official said that around 15,000 booklets are required across the country on daily basis to meet demand but Security Printing Corporation of Pakistan (SPCP) is not fulfilling the requirement. Reason behind the crisis is non-payment by I&P directorate to SPCP. Maqbool Ahmad Gondal, project director, could not be contacted despite several attempts till the filing of this report.
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