STEVTA’s side

Engr Liaqaut Ali Jamro, Sindh Technical Education and Vocational Training Authority’s (STEVTA) director academics said they offer admissions on the basis of the domicile. “If any of the candidates fail to produce a Karachi or a Sindh domicile, their admission will be considered fake,” said Jamro.

As per the officer, limited resources have rendered the authority helpless, hence, it is compelled to enrol local students according to the set criteria of admission; but around 50 seats have been reserved for other provinces, he said.

However, Jamro claimed that after recommendations of the relevant TEVTAs, students of other provinces or those whose parents don’t have a permanent city or provincial address on their CNICs will be enrolled.

At the DC’s mercy

Additional deputy commissioner of district West Samiullah Khan said, “The discretion to issue a domicile to anyone lies with the deputy commissioner since there is no written policy with regard to the matter.”

Domicile applicants are bound to provide a number of documents including original ownership documents of the property in whichever district it is located, permanent address on utility bills and the voter list; the applicant’s parents name, permanent address on their [the parents] CNICs, matriculation certificate, of Karachi or other relevant board, as well as birth certificates are also among the documents supposed to be filed with the DC when applying for a domicile.

He said that if any of these documents are missing, the DC’s office initiates an immediate enquiry under the supervision of the Mukhtiarkar. The deputy commissioner’s office decides on the matter after he is submitted the inquiry report. 

He acknowledged that residents of District West, owing to its ethnic diversity, are particularly face a number of difficulties in obtaining domiciles. “But we are trying to provide them the documents as per the government’s rules,” he maintained. 

  A lucrative business 

Residing in the metropolis for decades now, a majority of the people have no idea how to go about the process of acquiring domiciles and PRCs. They usually visit the nearest DC office to get the documents and are soon overwhelmed by what remains an incredibly complex process.

During a visit, this scribe observed that applicants do not commonly go inside the DC’s office but are found at the photocopy or the stamp post booths where unofficial agents mint money from them after assuring them of helping through the process, which they don’t.

Normally, the agents charge around Rs10,000 if a person needs an education domicile; however, if the applicant has two addresses printed on their CNIC, these fraudsters ask them to pay at least Rs15 to Rs20,000 to rectify the error. And if to an applicant’s bad luck a job domicile is required, they would be asked to pay at least around Rs60,000.

However, the applicants usually negotiate with the agents and manage to bring the prices a bit down.