Even braving long queues woll not get you your passport

People standing in long queues outside the passport offices in Garden Town and Abbot Road have not received their passports and were visibly irritated after waiting for hours outside the respective offices without any success.
Many people wanted to go for Haj this year and wanted a passport for that purpose. A citizen Babar Ali said that he had submitted his forms for the passport on August 27 along with the normal fee of Rs 3000, but after the lapse of more than a month he was yet to receive his passport. He also said that he was hoping to apply for Hajj and required the passport for the same reason.
Passport Office Deputy Directo, Shahid Iqbal told Pakistan Today that the process had been slowed down after a technical problem emerged during the printing of the passports. He said that passports had not yet arrived from Islamabad due to the technical problems.
Another citizen Dilawar said that if the passport authorities could not issue the passports in time, they should change the rules and regulations of the facility and inform the citizens about their decision. He also demanded a decrease in the fees of passports.
Tufail Ahmed, a resident of Lahore, said that he had been standing in the queue from 8 am in the morning, but he had yet to receive the token number for the required forms even after a lapse of five hours. He said that people who could afford the extra payment gave Rs. 800 to 1000 to passport agents and received their token number in five minutes.
A citizen Abida Parveen said that the passport authorities earned millions of rupees but there were no sitting arrangements in their offices, while drinking water facilities were also absent.
The officers were sitting in their air-conditioned rooms while the poor people sat outside on the floor and waited for their turn, which eluded them after waiting for long hours, she added.
People who failed to receive their passports even after the agreed date, said that the officials concerned should step up their efforts and enable them to receive their passports at the earliest, so that they could go for Haj or for business trips to other countries.