Passport Office employees without salary for three months

Employees stationed abroad facing similar situation

ISLAMABAD: Around 632 employees of the Directorate General of Immigration and Passports (DGIP), commonly known as the Passport Office, in the country have not received their salaries for the last three months.

In addition, more than 100 Pakistani diplomatic missions across the globe, where Machine Readable Passport (MRP) projects are being implemented, have received only four months salary and five months house rent during their work period of more than one-and-a-half-year.

To pay off the salaries of its employees, the Passport Office had requested the Ministry of Finance for a supplementary grant at the beginning of the new financial year 2017-18 in July, The Express Tribune has learnt.



“Supplementary grants are requested before the end of a financial year when funds are exhausted and additional funds are required. Given that this grant had been sought in the beginning of the new financial year means something is really wrong with our policies,” an official at the Passport Office, whose director general is Usman Akhtar Bajwa, commented requesting anonymity.

Bajwa is currently undergoing training at the National Defence University (NDU) Islamabad, while also retaining his director general’s post at the Passport Office. Due to his official training, Bajwa’s availability at the Passport Office is highly limited. He reportedly comes for an hour to the office daily at 3pm and leaves at 4pm.

“The DG is too busy to even address the genuine problems of the employees of the Passport Office,” sources said, adding that a director general is needed who can be regular and spend more time in the office.

“This happens only in Pakistan. A boss is undergoing training and employees are suffering. There is no paucity of competent officers to replace Bajwa till his 10-month training is done,” insiders said. The training started earlier this month.



Sources said that 632 employees were hired on contract basis under MRP Phase-2. These officials are appointed at the Passport Office in Pakistan and foreign missions under MRP Phase-2. Strangely, before hiring the employees - both gazette and non-gazette personnel - the posts and required funds were not sanctioned by the Ministry of Finance. The Passport Office also tried switching its allocations from developmental budget to a non-developmental one in a desperate bid to arrange funds, but failed.

Out of the pending arrears, only four months salary and five months house rent was paid to them and that too when the Federal Ombudsman took notice of the plight of the Passport Office employees posted abroad and ordered the Passport Office authorities to immediately release the funds for the affected lot, a few months ago.

Due to non-payment of funds, the employees posted abroad are facing a lot of problems. Cases have surfaced where landowners had to kick them out due to non-payment of the house rent. “In most foreign countries, laws are very strict and you have to pay the house rent on time. If you don’t, you may face legal action and go to jail. I wonder why our bosses are sleeping to this alarming situation,” a Passport Office official said.



When contacted, Bajwa agreed that the employees of the MRP Phase-2 Project had not been paid their salaries. He said the employees were hired for MRP Phase-2 on contract basis which ended in June this year. For the extension of the contract, a case summary was moved to the Ministry of Interior which forwarded it to the Establishment Division for obtaining No Objection Certificate, he added.