May 20, 2006	Saturday	Rabi-us-Sani 21, 1427

Please Visit our Sponsor (Ads open in separate window).

MULTAN, May 19: The traders of a city market known for cell phone and accessories’ business pulled down shutters of their shops on Thursday after coming to blows with some people who they branded as “passport office agents.”

The passport office had been shifted from Gulgasht Colony to Al-Rehma Centre near the busy Ghanta Ghar Chowk a few months ago. Some 20 huts of ‘agents’ were also established outside the passport office.

Before the introduction of the computerised passports, these agents apparently used to fill the application forms for the passport seekers. However, their actual trick was to help the applicants get their passports within stipulated time by making ‘inroads’ in the passport office.

The officials would seldom raise any objection to applications submitted with the help of an agent. The service was of course not free, as the applicants had to grease their palms.

But with the introduction of computerised passports, there is no need of a helper to fill the forms because the task is now done by the passport department officials. The agents, however, carved out a niche for themselves by offering services to fill the challan form which is required to submit passport fee in the bank. The format of their ‘actual job’ has also been transformed a bit, though the objective has remained the same.

Under the new system, the passport office in-charge issues a token number to the applicants who have deposited the fee to go through various stages of data entry from biometrics to interview. The applicants can appear for these stages according to their turn determined by the token numbers. The secret of the agents’ job now lies in getting the token numbers for their clients at the earliest.

People say they have to wait for several days to get the token number if they do not hire services of an agent sitting outside the passport office. The agents normally charge Rs1,000 for each case/token number.

When contacted, Multan passport office acting in-charge Muhammad Safdar Ansari denied that there was any link between the issuance of token numbers and the agents. “They (agents) hoodwink the people claiming that they have links in the office,” he said.

The passport officials may or may not have problems with the agents setting up their huts, tables and chairs just in front of their office, but the traders of Al-Rehma Centre said the business activity in market had gone down considerably since the establishment of passport office there.

They said the main source of nuisance were the agents, who had set up their huts before almost every shop of the centre. The traders had given an application to the district police officer a few days ago against, what they called, a passport office racket. The police had yet to take any action, as the agents and the traders scuffled when security guards of some of the traders stopped the latter to set up their huts on Thursday morning.

The traders later observed a strike and demanded immediate removal of the passport office agents from their market. The area’s Chehliak police station in-charge had reportedly come with his contingent to the troubled spot. The traders called off their strike in the evening only when the SHO assured them that the agents would not be allowed to operate in the market.