LAHORE, Dec 27: Applicants at the Passport and Immigration office at Garden Town protested at the shortage of officials on Thursday.

Dawn learnt that Assistant Director Iqbal Shahid informed some complainants that half of the staff had been transferred to Kasur where a regional office had recently been established. He informed several others that almost half of the employees were on sick leaves.

He too left the office when applicants started raising slogans after coming to know his different versions about the absence of the employees.

There were reports that officials had boycotted their official work in protest at the arrest of one of their colleagues by the FIA for helping Afghans get the Pakistani passport.

Of the 15 counters at the office, seven were functional.

At a passport office, an applicant has to undergo five stages. The fist stage is to snap the applicant for the passport. Of the three photograph counters – two for men and one for women –two were functional. Similarly, of the four second stage or data entry counters, two were operational.

Finger prints of applicants were being obtained in the third stage at one counter while the other was lying closed. The fourth stage counter which checks an applicant’s name on black or exit control lists was also functional.

It was hard to spot the employees manning two of the six interview or sixth stage counters owing to accumulation of applicants around the same.

Seeing the applicant in rage, another Assistant Director Jahanzeb Shah got his office locked from outside while Deputy Director Yahya Hussain Shah was in Islamabad to attend an official meeting there. The three officials also kept their cellular phones switched off till late night.