ISLAMABAD, Pakistan: Minister for Interior and Narcotics Control Chaudhry Nisar Ali Khan Monday informed the National Assembly that the online passport system would be introduced in the country from April next year.
“Online identity card system has already been introduced in the country while the online passport system will start from April and the facility will be extended to Pakistan’s embassies abroad by mid of the year,” he said during the question-hour session.
He said software for the online-passport system was being developed and it would be completed in two or three months positively.
He said 83 Pakistani embassies had been equipped with facilities of machine readable passports, which helped ending fake passports and corruption from the documents acquiring procedure.
He said online applications and registration of passports would further bring transparency, get rid of ‘corrupt mafia’ as well as from long queues of applicants.
To another question, Nisar said in past blue passports were ‘distributed’ and issued injudiciously, that brought bad name to Pakistan.
In past, he regretted that blue passports were used in human smuggling in the past, adding that the government cancelled over 2,000 such passports which were issued without quantification and in the name of so-called ‘public interest.’
To another question, the minister said the country’s one of the biggest issues was fake identity cards and passports, adding that the government had blocked hundreds of thousands of fake ID cards and cancelled thousands of such passports.
However, a review committee was being set up to look into the cases of those applicants who claimed that their ID cards and passports were blocked and cancelled wrongly.
Nisar said there was no discrimination with any city with regard to issuing of new identity cards, adding that there was a uniformed policy for issuance of new ID cards.
Source: APP
