Daily Times

As per new orders of Civil Aviation Authority (CAA), passengers traveling abroad will not have to go through the screening process thrice at Pakistani airports.

According to a notification issued by CAA, Anti-Narcotics Force (ANF), Airport Security Force (ASF) and Pakistan Customs will jointly search passengers at the same counter. Sources said, on the direction of Interior Ministry, CAA established joint baggage, search counters and joint CCTV at various airports. However, the order of joint search was not being implemented. The staff of multiple airports was blatantly neglecting the order from the Interior Ministry, sources added.

Moreover, the lack of mutual coordination between departments at the airport was also the key issue behind the non-compliance of the ministry’s order. The CAA has sent letters to the airport managers, stating that few departments were not following the orders of joint search of passengers.

As per the earlier practice, intentional passengers used to be screened thrice at three different counters of ASF, ANF and Customs.

Three-time screening used to waste a lot of time and passengers were facing considerable inconvenience at Pakistani airports. Keeping the ease of passengers in mind, the authorities came up with the initiative to converge all kinds of screening at one place.