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Eight new passport offices being set up

* Senate body wants more offices in Balochistan
* Directorate asked to review urgent fee for getting passports

By Irfan Bukhari

ISLAMABAD: The government is setting up eight more passport offices across the country to facilitate the people, Directorate General of Immigration and Passports Director General Wajid Ali Bukhari informed the Senate’s Standing Committee on Interior on Saturday.

“The new passport offices are being set up in Mandi Bahauddin, Mianwali, Hafiz Abad, Jhang, Chakwal, Battagram, Skardu and Khuzdar,” he said.

The meeting was chaired by committee Chairman Senator Talha Mehmood, who directed Bukhari to immediately take measures to set up additional passport offices in Balochistan, after Senator Dr Abdul Malik requested the DG to establish more offices to facilitate the people of the province.

On a query by Senator Mahmood regarding the disciplinary action against Pakistan’s Houston mission officials Ghulam Rasool Baloch and Muhammad Naeem, who issued a Pakistani passport to an Indian national, Interior Ministry officials told the committee that the culprits had been arrested and were being held in Adiala Jail.

Senator Talha Mehmood also raised the matter of a number of BPS16 officers serving in Pakistani missions with the authority to approve passports, saying it was the responsibility of assistant director-level officers.

Bukhari said several cases of corruption in Pakistani missions were surfacing, as there were only eleven missions where machine-readable passports were being issued.

Senator Talha Mehmood appreciated the machine-readable system introduced by the Interior Ministry, saying it would check forgery, but also asked the ministry to depute officials with impeccable service records in the missions abroad.

Talha asked Bukhari to submit a report before the committee within two weeks regarding the issuance of passports to people that had no passport numbers on the documents.

Senator Talha observed that according to information available, the passport offices in Mardan, Peshawar and Bannu were issuing Pakistani passports to Afghan nationals in exchange for bribes.

He asked the Directorate of Immigration and Passport officials to provide application forms received by these passport offices in the last week so that the committee could get them scrutinised by security agencies and validate the transparency of the issuing process.

The committee chairman also directed the Ministry of Interior Secretary to present a report before the committee about no deployment of police officials on pickets in Islamabad on the day the World Food Programme office was attacked by terrorists.

“A federal minister has told me that there was no force deployed on the F-8 picket on the day the UN office was attacked,” he said.

Committee members also objected to the high fee for getting urgent passports made and asked the department to review it.

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