ISLAMABAD: Parliamentary Secretary for Interior and Narcotics Control, Marriyum Aurangzeb on Monday apprised the National Assembly that setting up of 73 new passport offices have been approved which would be operationalized by November to facilitate the masses.
Replying to a supplementary question during a Question Hour, she said that out of these new passport offices, 15 would be set up in various districts of Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa.
She said that the ministry was actively working on proposal to set up a passport office at every district level.
She said that these offices would be operationalized soon as once recruitments and hiring of buildings process was completed.
Marriyum said that the PC-I of Machine Readable Passport/Machine Readable Visa Project, Phase-II was approved by ECNEC on March, 2, 2015 with estimated financial outlay of Rs 5974.321 million.
She said PC-I caters to the provision of establishment of 65 additional Passport Offices within Pakistan and installation of Machine Readable Passport System (MRPS) at 83 Pakistan missions abroad.
She said that currently out of 93 foreign Pakistan missions, MRPS was not installed in 40 missions. She said that the urgent passport would be provided to the applicants within four working days while normal passport would be provided to the applicants within 10 working days within the country. It is added that period/time for delivery of passports was curtailed from 5 to 4 days in urgent category whereas from 12 to 10 days in normal categories with 36 pages, she said.
The Parliamentary Secretary said the Directorate General, Immigration & Passports was currently managing the printing of passports of overseas applicants within 2 to 3 days in case of urgent passports and 7 to 8 days in case of normal passports. Thereafter, these passports have been dispatched to the concerned missions through international courier. To another question, she said that the United Nation had declared Pakistan a poppy free country since 2011 and 28 Police stations of ANF were working in the country to control/ stop the smuggling/ spread of narcotics.
She said that ANF personnel were deployed at all international airports, seaports and dry ports to counter precursors trafficking through passengers and goods.
To another question, she said that Poppy crops were observed during the current season in the following areas:- Sindh Province District Qamber Shandad Kot (Tehsil Qamber & Tehsil Warah) Balochistan Province District Loralai (Tehsil Duki & Tehsil Mekhtar) District Qilla Abdullah (Tehsil Gulistan) FATA Mohmand Agency (Tehsil Prang Ghar & Amber) Bajaur Agency (Tehsil Asil Targhow & Dhand Azghan) Khyber Agency (Bara area).
The Secretary said that 5272089 Smart Identity Cards have been issued till April, 8.
She said that active characteristics and benefits of Smart Card included most advanced security features in pre-print and post print personalization e.g. Changeable Layer Image (CLI), Multiple Layer Image (MLI), Ghost image, Diffractive Identification Device image (DID), Micro text printing, multilayered printing, etc.
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