LEKHANATH PANDEY

Gone are the days when the Department of Passport used to keep files of passport-seekers in sacks. As part of efforts to modernise its record-keeping system, the DoP has started keeping vital information about passport-seekers in digitised form, meaning they can acquire passports as and when necessary, provided they are playing by the rule.

The virtual record system launched on July 16 this year contains the applicants’ figure prints, scanned copies of citizenship cards and previous passports (if any), among others. “Now, finding vital information of applicants is just a mouse-click away,” says Ramesh Khanal, director-general of DoP.

This is a departure from the earlier system in which the department, until mid-July, used to keep applicants’ documents in sacks. From December 26, 2010, when the government switched to the Machine Readable Passport, till mid-July this year, the department had already issued more than 1.1 million MRPs.

“Now, we can keep digitised records of those who apply for passports,” Khanal said. Due to the shortage of human resources, it will not be easy to keep digitised records of those who have already acquired passports.”

The DoP, formally the Central Passport Office, issues more than 2,500 units of passports daily. For this job, it has 42 permanent staff and hired 46 technical staffers and clerks on contract.

The office has asked the Ministry of Foreign Affairs to provide the human and financial resources needed to update vital information of past applicants. Ironically, the ministry itself has been facing a serious human resources crunch, with almost an equal number of senior officers and junior staff.

In the absence of digitised data, the DoP had been finding it hard to provide the information needed to police, courts and other government offices. With vital information at our disposal, those in a bid to acquire additional passports by submitting forged documents will be discouraged, Khanal said.

Meanwhile, the DoP said it had issued 1,130,178 MRPs between December 10, 2010, and the end of June 2013. Of these MRPs, 1,065,054 were ordinary, 1,117 were diplomatic passports and 636 were travel documents.

Published on: 31 July 2013 | The Himalayan Times