Backlog of passports piling up

Thousands miss Umrah in Ramazan due to delay

LAHORE:

Because of a low stock of lamination paper, the Department of Passports and Immigration, instead of the usual output of about 12,000 passports daily, is delivering only up to 3,000, mostly urgent and e-passports.

Applicants paying the normal fees have to wait for about four months.

According to sources, more than 7,000 intending pilgrims from various cities were deprived of the opportunity to perform Umrah in Ramazan due to the passport delays.

According to the department, the lamination paper has once again run out. It imports the paper from France, but the consignment was delayed due to a shortage of dollars.

As a result, passports with normal fees have been significantly delayed, with the waiting time extending to four months instead of the usual 15 to 20 days.

More than 150,000 passports are pending with the department. Passports are being issued only to the urgent and fast-track fee payers. Despite generating annual revenue of Rs120 billion, the department has struggled to purchase lamination paper on time.

The sources said the ink and printers for the machine-readable passports are sourced from Germany. The department has the capacity to produce 25,000 passports per day, but the number of applications received exceeds 40,000 per day.

Every day, approximately 25,000 people from across Punjab, visit the offices to apply for passports. Many of them leave disappointed as passports are not available even after waiting in queues for hours.

Applicants Rana Abid, Faisal Nasir and Amjad Alvi said while speaking to The Express Tribune that they had applied for passports between November and January to perform Umrah in Ramazan but had yet to receive them, despite making payments to travel agents.

They said they are told to wait a few more days each time they visit the passport office.

Passports applied for in November are currently being processed, while those applied for in December, January, and February will be issued later.

The sources said the department was estimated to have received over Rs1 billion in fees from the applicants awaiting passports.

When contacted, the DG of passport and immigration attributed the delays to the shortage of lamination paper, exacerbated by issues related to the French company supplying the paper.

The DG said the problem had been solved and all pending passports would be issued by June.

Published in The Express Tribune, April 14^th, 2024.