LAHORE: The federal government’s plan to facilitate citizens with a passport valid for 10 years and generate increased revenues around 18 months ago has so far drawn a poor response owing to multiple factors, including financial viability, discouraging the trend by passport officials and lack of awareness.

Currently, less than 10pc of the applicants over 15 years of age countrywide are applying for new passports or renewing previous ones with those valid for 10 years and a rough estimate suggests that not more than 2,000 applicants have applied for new or renewed passports since the process started in 2013.

Sources in the Directorate General of Immigration and Passports Islamabad say the government has failed to achieve its required target of revenue generation and the Interior Ministry has also turned a deaf ear to the recommendation of passport officials who have pleaded to withdraw the 10-year validity facility.

They say poor quality of paper and lamination is the major reason the passport with 10-year validity is not recommended to citizens. Another reason is a strong apprehension that criminals could misuse the facility and people mentioned in the Exist Control List could benefit from the prolonged period.

Sources say approximately 20,000 passports are processed at 80 offices in the country while around 5,000 are processed at 25 foreign missions a day. A 36-page passport with five-year validity costs Rs3,000 (ordinary) and Rs5,000 (urgent) while a passport with 10-year validity costs Rs5,400 (ordinary) and Rs9,000 (urgent). The passports with 72 and 100 pages, both ordinary and urgent, valid for any time period cost more.

They further say the Interior Ministry never paid attention to the department which has the highest revenue collection as compared to others. The department generated Rs20 billion in Pakistan as well as abroad in 2014, but not a single penny was spent to increase manpower, physical resources and logistics, sources said, adding that only 10pc of the total revenue was required to improve quality of passport, its security features and general services at the passport offices.

They say a passport costs around Rs600 and out of Rs1.5 billion budget of the department, approximately Rs750 million goes to Pakistan Security Printing Corporation in advance for printing a passport copy.

Not more than 100 out of 1,000 applicants at the Garden Town office applied for the 10-year passport on Monday.

“I’m applying for a 10-year passport for the first time and the sole reason is to avoid hassle at passport offices,” said applicant Ahmad Ayyub.

Another applicant standing in a queue said he applied for a five-year passport because of financial reasons.

An official at the Garden Town passport office was of the view that majority of applicants preferred passports with five-year validity due to financial constraints, while limited, affluent applicants usually applied for 10-year-valid passports.

Published in Dawn March 6th, 2015

On a mobile phone? Get the Dawn Mobile App: Apple Store | Google Play