ISLAMABAD: Pakistan’s Interior Minister Mohsin Raza Naqvi recently disclosed that his ministry was receiving a “very high trend” of around 45,000-50,000 applications for new passports daily, saying that the country’s passport production equipment could not match the number due to which a backlog had accumulated.
During a National Assembly session on Friday, the minister was asked whether recently passports were issued with “inordinate delay” against the normal time period and whether such a slow process was still in place.
Naqvi responded that the Machine Readable Passport (MRP) facility had been established in 2004 to cater to only 30 regional passport offices within Pakistan and ten Pakistan missions abroad. He said over time, the passport offices increased to 223 while Pakistan’s missions abroad surged to 93. However, he said the passport production facility was never expanded nor equipped with the technology or equipment to make the printing process “faster and better.”
“Presently, the department is facing a very high trend of daily passport applications around 45,000 to 50,000 thousand from field formations, whereas, the production facility can merely cater for 20,000 to 22,000 passports per day,” Naqvi said. “Resultantly, the routine backlog is being accumulated.”
He said the government has made the passport production facility operational 24 hours during all seven days of the week in three shifts to cater to applicants on a war footing basis.
When asked whether the government was charging people exorbitant fees to issue passports on an urgent basis, the minister responded by saying that it is up to the applicants to choose and apply for passports according to their urgency under the prescribed categories of “normal,” “urgent” and “fast track.”
The development takes place weeks after local media reports published stories of citizens facing trouble procuring passports, some of which had been delayed for up to two months.
Among those who suffered delays in receiving passports were patients needing urgent medical treatment abroad, students seeking admission to foreign universities and individuals pursuing work visas, Pakistani English-language daily Dawn reported in September.
