The Administrative Reform Implementation and Monitoring Committee has advised the Department of Passport to begin double work shifts for effective passport distribution system by sharing the burden on an employee.

Though the department is providing services from 7:00 am till evening, a shift mechanism has not been implemented in the passport distribution due to shortage in manpower. Coordinator of the committee, former secretary Krishna Hari Baskota, Acting foreign secretary Shanker Das Bairagi, DoP director general Lok Bahadur Thapa, joint secretary at the Prime Minister Office Jagannath Devkota and other officials paid a visit to the department on Monday to inspect the passport distribution system.

According to a press statement issued after the visit, the DoP starts distributing token for passport applications form 7:00 am to 12:30 pm and those who receive the token get to apply passport applications the same day. DoP has started work from early morning to evening and it is more than a double shift work but the working modality has not been divided as so, said Thapa. “If we will get enough manpower, we can provide service in two shifts from any given day”.

The DoP provides service to four thousand people on a daily basis. Since introducing the Machine Readable Passport (MRP) in 2010 December 26 the DoP has issued 2.4 million MRPs. According to Thapa, out of a total of 2.5 million hand written passports over 1 million were replaced by the MRP and the remaining need to be replaced by November 24 next year. As per the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO), Nepal needs to replace all handwritten passport into MRPs by the deadline, a daunting task for the government.

The DoP, through various Nepali missions abroad, has been asking Nepalis to mandatorily replace manual passports . “Nepali missions should appoint a nodal officer, train the manpower designated for passport distribution system and ensure enough funds for its smooth implementation. If we can manage these, it shall simplify the process for our citizens,” said Baskota.

A separate forensic cell of Nepal Police stationed in DoP verify passport application forms for errors. Maiti Nepal, an NGO working to empower females is also assisting the DoP. “Having only 126 employees for passport distribution is however not enough,” Baskota lamented.

Published on: 4 November 2014 | The Kathmandu Post