Ten newly imported, state-of-the-art printing machines have arrived at the Passport Office and are scheduled to be operational in the next few days, clearing the backlog of passports for visitors nationwide.
According to insiders, a lack of printing equipment has caused a delay in passport issuing in recent years, mostly because departmental resources have not kept up with the growing demand.
Even at full capacity, the Passport Department only prints 20,000 to 22,000 passports every day, while receiving between 40,000 and 50,000 applications every day. Citizens waiting for their passports have experienced severe delays as a result of this supply and demand imbalance.
Ten desktop printers have already arrived in Pakistan and are being installed as a consequence of the government’s decision to acquire sophisticated passport printing equipment in order to address this problem.
As per the reports, these devices will be completely functional in the next days. When the Passport Office is up and running, its printing capacity should increase, cutting down on the amount of time citizens must wait to apply for passports.
Despite receiving millions of rupees in payments, the Passport and Immigration Department failed to issue passports to over 500,000 people on time, according to allegations that surfaced in August, authorities acknowledged.
Even urgent fee passports are now taking one to two months to issue, whereas normal fee passports used to be delayed by several months.
Departmental sources blamed the delays on an unexpected spike of Pakistanis looking to go overseas, which was fueled by the nation’s deteriorating economic situation.
