UAE: Indian Consulate in Dubai issues passport advisory to travel agents

Dubai: On the directives of the Indian Ministry of External Affairs (MEA), the Indian Consulate in Dubai has issued an advisory to warn travel agents, touts and companies against retaining passports of their employees and cautioned them against pasting stickers and defacing this important document.

A spokesperson at the Indian Consulate in Dubai said: “We have commonly seen that companies who prefer to withhold the passports of their employees, often indulge in pasting stickers with names and details of their employees on the top of the document, defiling the important Indian emblem embossed on that page. They do this to be easily able to identity the document and to which employee it belongs. However, we are educating all travel agents, touts and people handling Indian passports in companies to desist [from] doing this as per the new guidelines issued by MEA.”

The spokesperson added: “We are also requesting our BLS centres that is involved in processing this document to issue a word of caution to these agents and representatives. The Indian emblem must be clear at all times and no name sticker must be pasted on that.”