Roshan Sedhai

While paying the highest fee in all of South Asia while acquiring a passport , Nepali nationals are also forced to go through the lengthiest process. Passport seekers in Nepal have to wait for six weeks to two months for the 32-page document, while they pay Rs 5,000 ($55) to obtain the Machine Readable Passport through ordinary processing.

The Department of Passport under the Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MoFA) has a provision of urgent processing too, which takes a minimum of seven days, while the service seeker has to pay double the ordinary processing amount. Further, MoFA has another provision whereby the ‘very urgent processing’ takes at least 72 hours, while it charges Rs 15,000 for the service.

According to the Indian government’s official website, it takes 30 days to obtain a passport in India by paying Rs 1,000 ($17.6) for 36 pages and Rs 1,500 ($26) for 60 pages.

Official websites of other South Asian countries show that it takes 12 working days and $30 to collect a passport under normal processing in Pakistan. The cost of acquiring the document in Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, Bhutan and the Maldives is $38.6, $19.7, 17.6 and $22.7 respectively. For a 64-page passport , the Maldives charges $39.9. Acquiring a passport takes 21-30 working days in Bangladesh, 10 working days in Sri Lanka, three days in Bhutan and around 10 working days in the Maldives.While these countries also have the urgent processing provisions, they provide the services in almost half the amount charged by the Nepal government.

“It took me 10 days to obtain a passport in Kathmandu after i paid Rs 10,000.

What is more bothering is the fact that you have to stand up in a serpentine queue for more than 10 hours despite paying double the actual amount,” one Surendra Dueba of Rekiwa Bichawa, Kanchanpur district, said.

Prem Malla of Aatariya, Kailali, was also not happy with the “rude behaviour” of government officials “who make a fuss about every little thing.”

“These officials fail to see that they are paid from the money we pay. There is an urgent need to revise the cost and develop a decent costumer service culture in a place like the passport centre,” Malla said.

The condition is worse for millions of Nepalis living in foreign lands for studies or work. They are compelled to pay thrice the amount and wait for a much longer period of time than people living in Nepal.

For instance, the website of the Nepal Embassy in London says Nepalis residing in the United Kingdom will have to pay $165 and wait for three months for the passport to be ready.

MoFA officials say they are not in a position to do anything as the cost has been fixed in consultations with several stakeholders, including the Ministry of Finance. According to them, various reasons, including the high demand, inadequate resources and failure to decentralise the passport issuance mechanism, delay the processing of the documents.

“The ministry has been doing its best to deliver the documents on time by utilising all the available resources. We lack physical and human resources,” MoFA spokesperson Arjun Bahadur Thapa told the Post recently.

The Department of Passport (DoP) issues around 1,200 documents every day. The District Administration Office (DAO) collects application forms in chunks and sends them to the ministry, which then issues and sends the passport s back to the districts.

The high cost and the hassles have put migrant workers and students at the receiving end. For migrant workers, this has increased the overall recruitment cost by at least three times, which entails travelling back and forth from the Capital to the District Administration Office, food and accommodation. Government data show around 1,500 people take work permits for overseas job from the Department of Foreign Employment every day.

Published on: 5 June 2013 | The Kathmandu Post