ISLAMABAD – The woes of thousands of passport applicants are about to be over as the government has finally decided to order eight new machines for printing the travel document.
Sources claim that the director general of immigration and passports has prepared a requisition for ordering new machines though approval from the interior ministry is awaited.
It is expected that the new passport machines would be ordered by September after which the process would be expedited. The details imply that six desktops and two e-passport machines will be procured, capable of printing 1,000 passports in an hour.
The issue of delay in the printing of passports has been impacting thousands of Pakistanis for over a year; however, the procurement of passport machines would ease the applicants as well as the Directorate General of Immigration & Passports.
The shortage of lamination paper had triggered a backlog regarding the printing of passports causing inconvenience for citizens and youngsters who are leaving the country in large numbers.
At present, mostly urgent and e-passports are being delivered while those who want their passport through the standard process either need to wait or pull some strings.
The basic reason behind the backlog is the fact that the government of Pakistan imports the paper from France, but the consignment was delayed owing to a foreign currency problem.
There have been multiple efforts made in the past to clear the backlog but the issue persists to this day on top of the fact that hundreds of thousands of Pakistanis have left the country in recent years to look for better employment opportunities overseas.
