The Federal Government suspended all staff members of Okara Passport Office including Office in Charge Noushad Ahmed due to mismanagement and negligence and deputed new staff to save the public from hardships and mental stress. The action follows a surprise visit by Director General Immigration & Passports, Sikandar Sultan Raja, to Okara Regional Passport Office (RPO) on Thursday and observed the working of the office till 3:30pm.
He observed that only three officials were working against the minimum requirement of eight due to acute shortage of staff, ban on recruitment and inaction on the part of office in charge and zonal in charge. Even one out of three was absent. There was total chaos and mismanagement and applicants were sitting on the floor.
Taking strong notice of the situation, the DG Passport directed the Project Director of Machine Readable Passports Project to reach Okara by Friday (today) along with technical team and required staff to ensure smooth functioning of the office. Zonal Director from Lahore has reached Okara and has been directed to remain there till the time in office with perfect facilities made functional.
The DG directed the concerned authorities to make immediate arrangements for the provision of clean drinking water and washroom facilities to the passport applicants in the office. He further directed for the provision of hundred chairs by Friday (today) keeping in view the absence of any seating arrangement in the office. The DG Passport noted that Okara Passport Office's average workload is 100 to 125 passports per day. To ensure smooth functioning of the office, staff of at least eight is required. However, it was a sorry state of affairs, he said only one of the staff members was found performing all the functions of passport processing all alone which were meant to be performed by separate individuals at counters such as Token Photo Counter, Data Entry Counter, Biometric Counter, Delivery Counter, Scroll/Scanning and Record Room.
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