ISLAMABAD: The government is setting up eight more passport offices across the country to facilitate the people, Directorate General of Immigration and Passports Director General Wajid Ali Bukhari informed the Senate’s Standing Committee on Interior on Saturday.“The new passport offices are being set up in Mandi Bahauddin, Mianwali, Hafiz Abad, Jhang, Chakwal, Battagram, Skardu and Khuzdar,” he said.
On a query by Senator Mahmood regarding the disciplinary action against PakistanÂ’s Houston mission officials Ghulam Rasool Baloch and Muhammad Naeem, who issued a Pakistani passport to an Indian national, Interior Ministry officials told the committee that the culprits had been arrested and were being held in Adiala Jail.
Senator Talha Mehmood also raised the matter of a number of BPS16 officers serving in Pakistani missions with the authority to approve passports, saying it was the responsibility of assistant director-level officers.
Bukhari said several cases of corruption in Pakistani missions were surfacing, as there were only eleven missions where machine-readable passports were being issued.
Senator Talha Mehmood appreciated the machine-readable system introduced by the Interior Ministry, saying it would check forgery, but also asked the ministry to depute officials with impeccable service records in the missions abroad.