KARACHI: People face great trouble in getting passports
By Habib Khan Ghori
KARACHI, April 8: Hundreds of people, who took trouble to reach Awami Markaz from different parts of the city on Thursday to submit application forms for the newly-introduced machine-readable passports were disappointed when they came to know that the work had been suspended due to breakdown of the computer system.
The dejected applicants expressed their annoyance, complaining in sheer frustration that the authorities had no inkling of people’s trouble in travelling to this office from far off areas and then ascending three floors of Awami Markaz only to know that the system was out of order.
They even did not bother to put up a notice somewhere on the ground floor about the lapse so that people could, at least, be saved from scaling the three floors.
“So much so that those who had already arrived at the office in the morning and were asked to wait for the start of the official work, were informed of the system breakdown many hours after the officials had realized that there was no chance of reviving the system today,” an educated youth deplored.
An official, on condition of anonymity, told Dawn that the system server that linked the passport office to the headquarters in Islamabad had developed some fault on Thursday. The fault could not be rectified till Friday evening. According to the official, the server is being replaced with a new one but it is unlikely to make the system operational before Monday.
A notice stuck on the wall of the passport office’s entrance stated that applicants could not be entertained as the system server was not operational. The notice did not contain any information about resumption of public dealing.
Another notice displayed in a similar manner informed people that from Monday onwards, delivery of all passports (urgent or ordinary) would be made from the old passport office located in Saddar.
Some of the applicants argued that in this age of electronic media, it was very much possible for the relevant authorities to inform people through radio and TV channels about suspension of work
at passport office through
a communication.
For old women, and also the mothers holding their infants in their laps, who were among the disappointed applicants, it was really an ordeal as they had braved the sizzling weather to travel to the distant place in public transport means.
An elderly applicant among the sufferers, Mr Iftikhar, recalled that Khan Abdul Qayyum Khan, an interior minister a couple of decades back, had pledged delivery of passports at the doorsteps of every citizen. The minister believed that having a passport was a right of the citizens and responsibility of the government. The minister had taken practical steps in this regard due to which people were able to get passports without any trouble, said Mr Iftikhar, adding that if this spirit was demonstrated by the present government, nobody would have faced such problems.
Referring to the sudden breakdown of computer system on Thursday and resultant frustration among the passport seekers, the dejected people said that the system went out of order every now and then. “It has become a routine making scores of passport seekers to undergo similar agony quite frequently,” said one of them.
Many people at the passport office gave vent to their anger by severely criticizing the cumbersome procedure adopted for the purpose.
They pointed out that the people sitting in their air-conditioned rooms were officially supposed to process the applications to ensure that the data of an applicant was correctly entered, and also to assist people in getting their passports easily as people were yet to fully understand the newly-computerized system and the illiterate ones could not be expected to understand it in the decades to come.
The applicants are also supposed to appear before the officials for an interview. In this procedure, they observed, the role of ‘agent’ has been curtailed to a ‘labourer’ who would stand up in the long queue for an applicant to submit the form. He then gets the applicant, his client, a token which mentions due date for the delivery of the passport. He charges a minimum of Rs500 for his services but the rate may vary on a case-to-case basis.
A young man, standing in the queue on Friday to collect his passport, said that his passport had already arrived at this office from the headquarters but the officials were declining to hand it over to him. “They are asking me to produce the ID cards of my father and mother, a condition which had never been attached to the matter ever since the MRP scheme was announced,” he contended.
Present here, he indicated, were numerous passport seekers who were being told to produce different documents in order to ‘become eligible for a passport’. The documents included educational certificates or degrees, Nikahnama, citizenship papers, domicile, old passports, etc., he added.
“Like me, all such applicants are made to frequent the passport office only to be told to produce some other document,” he complained, adding: “They have made my life miserable.”
