Pakistanis face prolonged wait for new passports

Dubai Pakistanis are facing long delays to renew their passports as their consulate general in Dubai has restricted issuance of hand-written passports.

The decision to phase out the old passports has led to a huge rush at the consulate with hundreds of people queuing up from early morning waiting for their turn in a congested consular service hall that is clearly inadequate to cater to such a large number of applicants.

Between 1,000 and 12,000 people visit the consulate every day for various services. The consulate receives around 400 applications for passport renewal on average each day. "We encourage everyone to apply for Machine Readable Passports (MRPs) whether his or her passport has expired or not because we have restricted the issuance of the old manual passports which are now issued in genuine emergency cases or for newborns," said Amjad Ali Sher, the Pakistani Consul General in Dubai.

Shift system on anvil

Pakistani missions will completely stop issuing manual passports from June next year.

"It will be mandatory for all to have MRPs by June 30, 2010 and no one without the MRP will be able to travel," the Consul General told Gulf News.

Sher said the consulate is actively considering double shifts to cope with the increasing number of applicants. "We are finalising the plan and will soon announce the details about the new working hours for morning and evening shifts," he said.

The consulate, which caters to the community in Dubai and the northern emirates, has failed to upgrade facilities in keeping with the community's growth from a mere 200,000 individuals to more than 800,000.

The new requirements will further add to the rush as all applicants including women and children have to come in person to apply for MRPs because of fingerprinting and digital photo requirements for biometric passports. Data is electronically printed on the MRP and it cannot be forged because it also contains a chip with information about the passport holder. The new travel document is also expected to check human trafficking.

However, passport applicants are not impressed. "The consulate should make arrangements to accommodate such a large number of visitors," said Kabir Ahmad, adding that he had to wait for four hours to process his passport application.

"There is also hardly any space for women and children in the crowd who have to wait in the cramped room which is always full of male applicants," said a female applicant. She said it was downright embarrassing that no priority had been accorded to female applicants and called on the consulate to make suitable arrangements for female applicants.

The consulate had started the MRP service in 2005 and manual passports were to be gradually phased out but the ease of getting manual passports hasn't made its task any easier.

Frequent travellers: 100-page books on cards

Pakistani missions in the UAE will start issuing 100-page passports for frequent travellers within a few days, a senior official said.

"We are set to introduce 100-page passports especially [for] those who frequently travel and the truck drivers who operate in the GCC and run out of passport pages very fast," said Amjad Ali Sher, Consul General of Pakistan in Dubai. Currently, the consulate issues normal 36-page passports besides 72-page passports to businessmen.