The current situation in Lahore regarding machine-readable passports has intensified, causing significant challenges for citizens. Sources indicate a critical shortage of lamination paper at the Department of Passports and Immigration. Instead of the usual 25,000 passports daily, they are now only able to produce 5 to 7 thousand due to this scarcity.
This shortage is compounded by delays in importing lamination paper from France, attributed to a lack of dollars. Consequently, what used to take 15 to 20 days for normal fee passports to process now takes over 2 months. The backlog has risen to more than 150,000 pending passports.
Despite the Department’s substantial annual revenue of 120 to 150 billion rupees, they couldn’t secure the lamination paper on time. Currently, only urgent and fast-track fee passports are being processed promptly, while routine applications face delays.
The Department sources lamination paper from France and ink/printers from Germany. Although they have the capacity to produce 25,000 passports per day, they receive over 40,000 applications daily.
In Lahore, where 20 to 25 thousand applicants, primarily from Punjab, visit daily, queues are long, and many leave without their passports despite waiting for hours. Officials attribute this delay to the feeding of data only from Lahore, while the printing of machine-readable passports occurs centrally at the headquarters. The passports are distributed to applicants upon arrival.