The immigration and passport section in Karachi has been delaying the issuance of my passport for several weeks.
KARACHI: Through the courtesy of your newspaper, I would like to draw the attention of the interior minister to the severe problems being faced by the general public in the procurement of passports. The immigration and passport section in Karachi has been delaying the issuance of my passport for several weeks now and I believe there are hundreds of others like me.
I have been waiting for several weeks to get my passport and my anxiety is compounded by the fact that I have to travel overseas to attend a conference. I have visited the passport office in Karachi several times and all that the staff does is to pass the blame onto the headquarters in Islamabad. What is surprising in all of this is that those who pay the higher charge for an ‘urgent’ passport are being issued the document without any delay. Instead of checking our cricket team for spot-fixing, the interior minister is advised to do something about this issue since it concerns his own ministry.
For the record I applied for an ‘ordinary’ passport (token number 10301286847) on February 12 and am still waiting to receive it.
Muhammed Saleem Rehmani
Director, Foreign Exchange Adjudication Department,
State Bank of Pakistan
Published in The Express Tribune, April 4th, 2011.
