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Thursday, May 15, 2008
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Manpower shortage hits Passport Office

S. Sundar

Inordinate delay in issuing passports to applicants in nine districts

MADURAI: An elderly woman P. Nagalakshmi of Kalavasal here was seen anxiously waiting outside the Madurai Passport Officer’s chamber to have an audience with him on Wednesday. She had waited long enough – for five months – to get her passport.

She wants to rush to Canada to take care of her pregnant daughter. “I applied for the passport on January 7. I should have got it in one month. But, that has not happened,” she said. However, her husband, T. Periyasamy, who had applied along with her, received it in March.

Stating that her daughter is expected to give birth to her second child next month, Nagalakshmi is worried as to whether she would be able to join her daughter in time. As per her original plans she would have been beside her daughter by now.

Ms. Nagalakshmi would have to further wait for her visa, then to get tickets and all her programme hinged solely on the issuance of her passport. There are many more persons from nine southern districts like her.

But, manpower shortage continued to plague the Madurai Passport Office and applications continued to pile up. Initially, when the office was commissioned in December 2007, officials brushed aside the delay as a teething problem. Then they blamed it on “time taken for police enquiry”. But, now the staff have come out openly accusing the mismatch in the number of hands and the number of applications received for the inordinate delay.

The All India Passport Employees’ Association resorted to a sit-in protest on Wednesday demanding to relieve all the 40 employees transferred to Madurai following the bifurcation of the Tiruchi Passport Office. However, normal work resumed after a couple of hours.

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