Director General (DG) of Immigration and Passports Mustafa Jamal Qazi on Friday said that the backlog of passports in major cities has been cleared and that the government will now resolve the issue in the remaining cities. Earlier this year, it was reported that several citizens were facing trouble procuring passports, some of which had been delayed for up to two months. As the delivery of passports witnessed delays, those on the receiving end were patients needing urgent medical treatment abroad, students seeking admission to foreign universities, and individuals pursuing work visas. Despite paying “urgent” fees for expedited service, many applicants said that they were waiting for months to obtain their passports but without success. The prolonged delays exacerbated the frustration and anxiety of many, highlighting a critical need for efficiency and reform in the passport issuance process. There were public complaints that the passport issuance process, which was supposed to take 21 working days for the delivery of the document to the applicant, was now taking months. In a video statement, DG Qazi said that he was grateful to the citizens for showing patience, admitting that there was a delay in the delivery of the passports which the government took up as a challenge. “The government had limited resources for printing the passports,” he said, adding that 65,000 passports were being processed daily. “However, the government was only able to print approximately 23,000 passports daily,” he added. He said that the procurement for the new printers was completed and they would arrive in Pakistan within a month, adding that the printing process would then “normalise”. The official said that another reason for the delay was because several passport offices were being revamped. Qazi added that the government had devised a strategy to give priority to major cities from where people have to travel abroad more often. “All categories of backlogs – normal, fast-track, and urgent – have been resolved,” he said, adding that there was also a backlog of around 24,000 pending applications in the online portal which was also cleared. He said that the government would now move to resolve the issues in the remaining cities of the country. In July, DG Qazi had told a Senate panel that the backlog of passports had skyrocketed. According to an official statement, the Senate Standing Committee on Interior was told by the DG that, while there was no backlog in the overseas category, around 16.5 million applications were pending in the ‘normal’ category. The figure, however, seemed too high, since the backlog stood at around 0.8m in May, and some observers believed the figure mentioned in the official statement could be a typo. Later that week, the DG approached the Federal Board of Revenue (FBR) to swiftly clear a consignment of ink cartridges to help reduce the massive backlog of undelivered passports to citizens. The passport directorate highlighted that due to the non-availability of funds or delay in processing claims on customs duties and taxes, relevant authorities do not clear consignments in time, which delays passport production operations. The delay in the dispatch of printing ink had significantly hampered the passport printing process, leaving customers – even those paying extra in the urgent category – to wait for months to get their passports. Last month, Law Minister Azam Nazeer Tarar informed the National Assembly that new machinery and software would be installed to increase the printing capacity of passports up to 60,000 per day by the end of September.