Passports for the rich

The rich and arrogant class of the country never stands in a queue – unless it happens to be a foreign country. For a state to reinforce this ‘VIP’ attitude by designing special systems for this class is totally incomprehensible. The recent announcement of the passport department to build special passport executive centres is a step to further demean the ordinary citizens of this country. In a recent interaction with the director-general passports, it was emphasised that instead of creating comfort zones for a few, there was a need to improve the passport-making process for all. Five specific actions were suggested: a) removal of all touts from outside the passport office, b) complete elimination of queuing up for payment and replacing the process by mobile phone money transfer schemes, c) doubling the picture-taking and document verification counters that account for the largest component of the cycle time, d) eliminating numerous visits that customers make to collect their passports and instead making the delivery of passport an integral part of the passport process, e) describing the new process, the fee structure and documents needed in Urdu and English on the internet as well as newspapers.

Sadly, as expected from an outdated bureaucracy, one finds little progress on what ought to have been done and a lot on what ought to have been avoided. Can we request the passport department to rethink and redesign an efficient system that every Pakistani is
proud of?

Naeem Sadiq

Karachi