The hassle to process the ordinary passport booklet will finally come to end. Applicants waiting to receive their passport booklets for quite some time can expect to receive them in the coming week. The Foreign Ministry has received the second consignment of passport recently and is hopeful of clearing the backlog in the next few days.
The Passport Division had received 20,000 booklets of the ordinary passport so far, including the second consignment.
“To all the applicants hoping to get their passports, from seven to 10 days from now, we will be able to print and provide them to all,” said Foreign Minister Dr Tandi Dorji.
The division ran out of the ordinary passport booklets in August and started issuing the travel document as a temporary measure.
Although the issuance of ordinary passport booklet resumed last month, the division could not issue it to all applicants as there was a huge backlog.
The ministry was hoping to receive 50,000 passport booklets by the end of last month. However, the agent had sent only 10,000 booklets in the first consignment. As a result, the division printed just 200 booklets in a day.
Bhutan imports passport booklets from Germany.
“In the present scenario, around 10,000 booklets have arrived. The need for a passport right now is not more than 4000. Therefore, we are printing between 400 and 500 passport booklets a day,” added the Foreign Minister.
When the issuance of the ordinary passport resumed in November, preference was given to those who needed the document urgently. However, the ministry says that many did not turn up after completing the process to collect their printed passport copies. According to the division, almost 1000 booklets are not collected as of now.
The division has verified 1700 applications that are ready to be printed with around 1800 due to be verified. There are two printing machines in the Passport Division with additional staff working overtime and on weekends to print 500 passport copies a day
According to the ministry, more than 500 passport copies were printed yesterday, and with an adequate number of booklets in stock, it assures that there will not be any problem in the coming days.
The ministry added that a number of countries around the world are facing a shortage of passport because of the shortage of chip for passports.
Meanwhile, the ministry says it did not order a huge number of passport booklets in the past even with the exodus to Australia as the passport division was on the verge of migrating from hard copies to e-passports. The ministry now plans to move to e-passport when the Digital Identity project completes.
Devika Pradhan
Edited by Phub Gyem
