KARACHI; Sept 28: There has been no sign of the resumption of passport delivery to some 10,000 applicants who had been given different dates for the collection of their passports but on the delivery date asked to wait till the arrival of the required production material from the United States.

According to the officials concerned, production of passports came to a halt after a US company delayed dispatch of consignments of laminators on quality grounds. Ultimately, the delivery of passports to the applicants had to be stopped.

“As soon as the material arrives, we will resume production of passport books and the applicant would get their passports but it is not possible to give a precise date for the process to resume,” said a source close to the Directorate of Immigration and Passport.

The process has been disrupted on Sept 1 and no ordinary passport has been issued from any passport offices anywhere in the country. However, cases of urgent nature and applications for diplomatic passports are being handled promptly.According to the source, the National Database and Registration Authority (Nadra) had initially undertaken printing of the high-tech travel document with introduction of the machine-readable passport (MRP) book. However, it stopped producing the MRP books towards the end of 2005.

Later, the task was assigned to the Directorate of Immigration and Passport with the transfer of all relevant machinery and equipment.

The lapse has particularly perturbed the pilgrims intending to proceed to Saudi Arabia to perform Umra.

In Karachi alone, 40,000 to 50,000 people normally proceed to the Saudi Arabia in Ramazan.