The Garden Town Passport Office in Lahore is dealing with a large influx of applicants during the night shift, which is made worse by the lack of gazetted staff. Data entry operators are in charge of the operations.
The aforementioned rise in foot traffic has brought to light other operational concerns, such as the capricious distribution of tokens and the current disputes involving the data input personnel.
It has come to light that junior data entry operator Aamir Hassan, a Grade 15 officer, has started interviewing people seeking passports. Both employees and applicants are perplexed by Hassan’s claim that he is in command of the office.
When word spread that the gazetted official was not in the Garden Town Passport Office, the issue became even more difficult. As a result, citizens—many of whom have been waiting for a prolonged period of time to submit their applications—now face a heavier task from the current workforce.
There is currently a similar surge in applications for the night shift, which was originally introduced to handle the excess of daytime candidates. Candidates describe a disorganised setting where tokens are distributed at random, which causes annoyance and protracted wait periods.
There is a backlog in the passport issuance procedure as a result of the increase in applications and the absence of the gazetted officer.
