SWABI: Lack of facilities in the newly established passport office in the district headquarters here is causing problems for the passport seekers.

The office was established about five months back, inaugurated by adviser to the prime minister Amir Muqam. The office was established in a building owned by a PML-N district leader.

The federal interior ministry has yet to have its own building for the office.

People said that despite numerous complaints the authorities were unmoved to provide the requisite facilities at the passport office.

“When the government was not in a position to provide adequate facilities in the passport office, why it set up the office in the first place,” Safdar Khan of Maneri Bala village, questioned.

There are no chairs for the people, particularly women, to sit while waiting for their turn, forcing them to sit on the floor, he said.

Due to rush of people in summer and a closed building there is always suffocation and heat inside the office, which makes the process of having the passport done more troublesome, Safdar Khan said.

A woman passport seeker said: “In my whole life I have not experienced such a difficult situation as confronted by her in Swabi passport office.” She said there was a single washroom in the office shared by both the visitors and the staffers.

There is also no arrangement for providing drinking water to the visitors, she added.

Staffers also lamented lack of facilities both for them and the visitors in the passport office.

TOBACCO CROP: Both opposition and treasury members of the district council have unanimously demanded of the federal government to give tobacco the status of crop, and that collection of taxes on it should be handed over to the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa government after the 18th Constitutional Amendment.

They said tobacco crop was grown in a number of districts in KP, but it was yet to be given the status of a crop, which was injustice with the poor growers. They pointed out that the federal government received Rs100 billion through different taxes on tobacco annually at the cost of poor farmers.

“The crop is grown by the farmers of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, but its benefits are taken by the federal government,” district nazim Ameer Rehman, said, vowing that they would fight for their rights.

Azizullah Khan, the opposition leader in the district council, said the local government representatives, whether from opposition or treasury benches, would fight for the rights of the poor tobacco growers.

Published in Dawn, August 7th, 2016