Aurangzeb, Head of Chancery and Charge de’Affaires at the Pakistan embassy told The24X7News that embassy had cleared the backlog of over 5000 passports in addition to thousands of the national identity cards since January, thanks to the National Database and Registration Authority’s initiative to clear up the outstanding applications.
“We have taken steps at our end by streamlining the process of keeping the applicant’s informed about the status of their applications both for passports and ID cards including NICOP, POC etc. Apart from the online tracking system of NADRA, embassy in Bahrain notifies applicants about their documents’ arrival and the timing to collect them,” Aurangzeb said.
“Initially we face challenge for issuing thousands of SMS especially with limited human resources but somehow we dare to initiate the service. This step has also restored the confidence of the people in public service who never believed that Pakistan embassy can inform each and every applicant about the application status. Now we have one window operation at the Pakistan embassy as all applicants are entertained by a designated staff sending and receiving documents from NADRA,” he explained.
“During the crisis when people failed to get their renewed passports Pakistanis had also faced problems with the Labour Market Regulatory Authority (LMRA) which required the documentation within a specified period. We at the embassy had issued handwritten passports as a temporary solution while awaiting their passports from Islamabad. In many cases, if you don’t submit papers of your employees, businesses may face blacklisting according to the laws of the LMRA,” he said.
With regard to community services, he said, people can contact the designate desk in the embassy instead of waiting in the queue.