TAHIR AMIN
ISLAMABAD: The revenue from Department of Immigration and Passports (DI&P) decreased to Rs 18 billion in 2017-18 compared to Rs 20.07 billion in 2016-17.
According to documents available with Business Recorder, Department of Immigration and Passports’ revenue remained Rs 18 billion in 2017-18. The expected revenue shall remain below the budgeted amount keeping in view the fact that number of applicants has decreased up to approximately 600,000.
The documents maintained that revenue of the department was Rs 20.846 billion in 2015-16, Rs 18.356 in 2014-15 and Rs 17.717 billion in 2013-14.
The documents further revealed that 4,141 individuals were placed on black list during 2017-18 while 932 individuals were removed from black list during 2017-18. The Department of Immigration and Passports is reviewing the black list policy by incorporating Black List Rules in the Passport Rules, 1974.
According to the documents, the department has planned to introduce premium service at eight regional passport offices after office hours (04:00pm to 07:00pm) on realization of Rs 2,000 each applicant. Further the launch of ICAO compliant e-passport (chip-based) for swift immigration at airports is in the pipeline. Furthermore, the department has planned to convert desktop printing of passport to bulk printing solution.
The department has authorized all National Bank of Pakistan (NBP) branches to collect passport fee in 15 major cities. Payment of passport fee through branchless banking has also been launched. The department has reduced the time period for delivery of passport / processing of passport from 5 days to 4 days in case of urgent passports and 12 days to 10 days in case of ordinary passports.
Passport processing time at regional passport offices has been decreased from over 150 minutes to around 75 minutes (50 percent reduction in processing time).
The department has also launched Home Delivery Services for passport applicants across the country to facilitate the public in 15 major cities as well as launched home delivery of passports to overseas Pakistanis living abroad.
Online renewal of machine readable passport had been launched on 17th October 2016. Currently, the service is available for renewal of passports of overseas Pakistanis. So far 146,627 overseas Pakistanis have applied for renewal of passport through online portal.
