Govt earns Rs32.877b through visa fee in 3 years

Department of Immigration and Passports has contributed Rs32.877 billion to national kitty, earned through visa fee and issuance of passports during last three years. The department has issued around 7.797 million Machine Readable Passports (MRP) through its 59 countrywide offices during the period and took numerous measures to achieve the targets, a senior official said on Wednesday.
Talking to APP, the official said the MRP system was launched in 2004 and until now around 13.322 million passports have been issued. He said that the basic objective of the Department is to facilitate people and in this regard, the new visa form was introduced while number of passport offices in the country was increased from 30 to 59.
He said three passport offices are ready for operations and establishment of two more offices is in process. Regarding MRP facilities at Pakistan’s mission abroad, the official said number of missions extending MRP to overseas Pakistanis has also increased from 10 to 17. Furthermore, MRP system has been installed and ready for operation in six missions abroad. These missions are in Canada, Malaysia, Syria, Spain, and in two cities of Australia where MRP system would soon initiate operations.
He said that in order to facilitate frequent travelers, business community and Hujaj, MRP with 100 and 72 pages has been introduced under directions of President and Prime Minister. Moreover, for the facilitation of Hujaj, over 0.2 million MRP’s were issued per annum during 2009 and 2010, the official informed.
Regarding the Machine Readable Visa (MRV) System, he noted that this was installed at Islamabad as a pilot project in 2009, has been deployed at provincial capitals and is going to be operational from next month. More branches of National Bank have been authorised to collect passport fee for public convenience. The official said during the period, eight buildings at D.G. Khan, Faisalabad, Sargodha, Multan, Gujranwala, Gujrat, Mirpur (AJK) and Quetta were constructed and offices shifted to new building. Construction of four office buildings at Rawalpindi, Sukkur, Abbottabad and D.I.Khan is in progress, he said and added land was also acquired for construction of six buildings at Bahawalpur, Sialkot, Muzaffababad, Bagh, Lahore (For technical Hub) and headquarter expansion.