The machine-readable passports that the government had proudly started issuing in the last week of October, it now turns out, were launched without the necessary groundwork. They are now causing immeasurable difficulties and indignities to travellers on visits abroad. During the recent days, several reports have appeared of the bearers of these passports being turned back from UAE airports while in transit to destinations in other parts of the world.
The Karachi Chamber of Commerce and Industry is also reported to have approached the federal government with the complaint that one of its members, a trader on his way to Frankfurt and Croatia, was stopped in Tehran on suspicions created by the unfamiliar passport.
The businessman was lucky enough to be allowed to stay in the Iranian capital while he tried to get a confirmation letter from the Pakistani Embassy to establish the genuineness of his passport. He did not have the luck, though, to get the desired help. The embassy's Home Consular Section told him it had not received the required information from Islamabad.
These are only some of the reported cases. Many more people may have had to face troublesome situations at foreign airports. Worst suffers, one can easily imagine, would be students, businessmen, and physically unwell people - all pressed for time to reach their destinations.
But of course, others too must have a lot to complain of on being unable to arrive at their destinations on time for important business, for being treated as suspects by the immigration officers at foreign airports, and also for wastage of money on a journey that had to be aborted for somebody else's fault.
Whose fault exactly it is? After the Interior Ministry decided to replace the old passports with machine-readable ones, it was supposed to inform the Foreign Ministry of the change along with prototypes of the new passport for circulation to our embassies abroad as well as the foreign missions in Islamabad so that they could send the same to their respective immigration departments. Obviously, that has not happened; the international immigration authorities are unaware of the change. One indication that the Foreign Office did not have the information, or it simply sat on it, was the ignorance that the Tehran embassy expressed about the issue when contacted by the stranded Pakistani businessman.
Apparently, it was the Interior Ministry officials who goofed over the matter. For when our correspondent asked them to specify the date when this important piece of information, along with a specimen of the new passport, was passed on to the Foreign Office, they could not give a precise answer even though they maintained that they had sent out its prototype to the Foreign Office. It could well be an attempt on the part of one government department trying to protect another, or simply to create confusion.
The issue is too serious to be forgotten or forgiven. The government must institute an inquiry into the affair and lay the blame where it belongs. Those having had to suffer the consequences of what clearly is a case of sheer ineptitude, if not criminal negligence, deserve some sort of solace.
It would not be wrong if they demanded damages for their suffering. The least they may expect would be replacement tickets for the journeys that ended unproductively and unceremoniously.