KARACHI:
I wish to draw the attention of anti-corruption officials towards the ongoing corruption at the passport office located in Saddar, Karachi. The passport office these days is offering two types of services for obtaining Pakistani passports — normal and urgent. The application fee for a normal passport is Rs3,000 and the delivery time is three months, whereas an urgent passport is issued in two months upon payment of a Rs5,000 fee.
A year back, the fee to get a normal passport made was Rs2,000 and its delivery time was 12 days, whereas the fee for an urgent passport was Rs4,000 and its delivery time was four days. Last month, one of my friends, who already has a passport, needed to renew it urgently due to his job abroad. He encountered a man outside the passport office, who identified himself as an ‘agent’ and promised to get him a new passport book in just four days if he paid him an urgent fee of Rs5,000 plus an extra Rs8,000 as bribe. As my friend was in dire need to renew his passport and to save his job abroad, he agreed to the agent’s terms and conditions. He was advised to visit the passport office at 4 pm (after passport office hours). The agent got all the processing work done with the help of the passport office staff who was still present in the office to handle such cases.
After two days, my friend got a call that his passport was ready and it could be collected at any time from 9am to 5pm from Monday to Friday despite the agent’s promise to deliver it himself in four days. The agent who helped my friend was not an outsider but a staff member of the passport office. Till last month, he was demanding Rs13,000 but now he is demanding Rs25,000 to get an urgent passport made in seven days.
One of the passport officials my friend spoke to said that even normal passports get ready in two days in Islamabad but the staff adopts delaying tactics to mint money from passport seekers. It appears that the entire passport office staff from top to bottom is involved in this corrupt practice. A passport is a sensitive travel document and cannot be issued unless all verifications of the applicant are properly checked and verified. Somebody in the corridors of power will have to check on this before it is too late.
M Rafique Zakaria
Published in The Express Tribune, March 15th, 2013.
