Corruption in passport office

The kind of nefarious activity taking place at passport offices across the country needs to be taken urgent notice of.

It is difficult to comprehend the lengths a few individuals would go to ensure their favoured company wins a contract, all the while creating a backlog of passports that runs into the hundreds of thousands, not to mention a huge amount of suffering for people in and outside Pakistan. But this is what a joint investigation by the ministry of interior and the FIA found earlier this month — that rules were bent and top officials involved in an extraordinary scam to award a company a contract to laminate passports — and now the case on the contract is being heard by the Islamabad High Court as another party has challenged the awarding process. Undoubtedly, there are important truths that need to be unearthed, like why wasn’t the lamination paper procured well in advance, but of utmost importance is getting the passports delivered to people who applied for it months ago. This must be the caretaker interior ministry’s priority. So should be resolving the matter of the legal case so that one can move forward and hopefully learn from this issue.

Nearly a month ago, the number of backlog passports stood at 750,000 and that number has likely increased given that the passport directorate is accepting passport applications, and taking urgent fees from applicants knowing that it cannot process passports within the stipulated seven-day period. The kind of nefarious activity taking place at passport offices across the country needs to also be taken urgent notice of because according to media reports, “agents” are charging exorbitant fees to expedite the process in these troubling times for which they must have some official support. Then there is the very real concern about the impact this has had on the economy, not to mention overseas Pakistanis whose passports expire, as they run several legal risks in their host countries that temporary solutions do not address. People should not have to suffer this issue ever again. The caretaker government must immediately take concrete steps to resolve this matter and punish those responsible for putting the country in this sordid mess.

Published in The Express Tribune, April 21^st, 2013.