Pakistani government has begun issuing e-passports, a service that enables residents to prepare the travel document from the convenience of their homes.
The fee schedule for them has been made public by the Directorate General of Immigration and Passports.
- The price for a 36-page, five-year electronic passport will be Rs9,000, per the timetable.
- An urgent e-passport will cost Rs 15,000 to obtain.
- The standard charge for a 72-page electronic passport is Rs16,500, while the urgent fee is Rs27,000.
- A 36-page, ten-year electronic passport will normally cost Rs13,500.
- A citizen must pay Rs22,500 if they need this e-passport right away.
- A 72-page electronic passport with ten years of validity would cost the standard amount of Rs24,750.
- An urgent 72-page electronic passport will cost Rs. 40,500 and be valid for 10 years. The schedule won’t modify the standard passport fees.
Many people are relieved by the outcome as the unusually high demand for passports has caused the supply of standard passports across the nation to be delayed by more than a month.
Application Process for e-Passport
The procedure for applying for a traditional passport will be the same as that for the Pakistan e-Passport. The e-passport service would initially only be accessible to Pakistani diplomats and government employees.
The e-Passports will be delivered to applicants after the manufacturing process is finished. equivalent to a Machine Readable Passport (MRP), an e-Passport will require equivalent documentation.
Benefits of e-Passport
More than 150 nations around the world presently use e-Passports. A number of nations have moved to the e-Passport as a result of the growing demand for effective border security.
All airports worldwide offer the e-gate facility to Pakistan e-Passport holders. It would also make it easier for Pakistani applicants to process online applications and help remove all the barriers in the current manual approach. Extending privileges to Pakistanis living abroad will ultimately help the country because the e-Passport conducts several security checks.
Prominent Features
According to sources, there are now lengthy waiting periods for passport issuance for individuals in the nation’s largest cities, including Karachi.
Instead of the typical 10 days, the standard delivery period for passports has increased to more than a month.
Similar to this, it now takes 15 days instead of the previous 5 days to deliver an urgent passport. The delivery time for fast-track passports, which was previously two days, is now five days.
People who want to go on Umrah pilgrimages, as well as those who are going overseas for employment or school, are having difficulty because of this huge delay. Instead of the usual range of 24,000–26,000, the daily number of passport applications has risen to 40,000.
In order to eliminate the delay in passport delivery, the printing time has been extended to 24 hours a day, seven days a week, with no staff holidays.
