KATHMANDU, DECEMBER 28
Deputy Prime Minister and Home Minister Rabi Lamichhane visited the Department of Passports under the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, in Tripureshwor, Kathmandu.
The DoP is one of the offices where people have to stand in long queue to get service. The first meeting of the Council of Ministers decided to improve the services delivered by the DoP.
The DoP prepares and distributes passports on an urgent basis. While making an urgent passport, one has to pay a much higher fee than normal fee. Since service-seekers have to reach the DoP to get their passports even after paying more fee, the number of customers at the Department never declines.
A passport with 34 and 66 pages can be prepared for Rs 5,000 and Rs 10,000 respectively from the district administration office. But when a customer seeks a passport urgently from the office of the DoP at Tripureshwor, s/he has to pay Rs 12,000 for 34-page ordinary passport and Rs 20,000 for 66-page passport.
Even at such a cost, people are making urgent passports from the office of the Department in Kathmandu. About 6,000 citizens visit the Department's office on a daily basis for the purpose of making passports.
Every day, the premises of the Department witnesses overwhelming pressure and crowd of citizens. After being appointed as Prime Minister, Pushpa Kamal Dahal announced that he would expand the service in a way that citizens wouldn't have to stand in long queues for passports.
Meanwhile, the director of the Department and spokesperson Durapada Sapkota informed mediapersons since the principle of decentralisation could not be applied in the distribution of passports, the DoP was always crowded.
Sapkota said if the state did not facilitate the principle of decentralisation, the passport department would always be overcrowded.
"Although it is not possible to remove the crowd within a short span of time, the crowd and long queue can be gradually removed if the state facilitates decentralisation and makes a good policy and develops the system accordingly," Sapkota said.
"The major problem at present is that everyone goes to the DoA to make passports. Due to this, there is a lot of crowd here. But if it can be comprehended that passports are issued not only here but also from 77 district administration offices and 17 area administration offices, the crowd in the department will be automatically controlled. The current rush is happening only in Kathmandu. If information can be disseminated that passports can also be taken from these 94 places, then this crowd can be controlled," she added.
She further stated that even if the prime minister had announced that he would clear the crowd, it was not that easy. "For that to happen, we need to work on the skills of staffers employed at the DoP."
"We have welcomed the decision taken by the government. However, staffers need to be increased here and necessary training should also be provided to them if needed. Similarly, arrangements have to be made to get passport from outside the DoP - 77 district administration offices and 17 area administration office. And there too, adequate training and manpower should be provided. Only then will it be possible to reduce the crowd and long queues."
According to Sapkota, although the DoP has the capacity to provide services to 2,000 people, it has to serve around 6,000 people on a daily basis.
Sapkota said the DoP had the capacity to print 1,800 passports per day, but it had been issuing 6,000 passports on a daily basis based on the applications received from all over the country.
"We are also printing around 2,000 passports from here."
A version of this article appears in the print on December 29, 2022, of The Himalayan Times.
