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A different kind of workspot for him
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"The Regional Passport Office here takes about 60 days to issue a normal fresh passport from the date of submission of an application. This long duration is mainly because of the sharp rise in the number of applications, resulting from increasing awareness among the public of the value of having travel documents."
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G. Mathi Vathanan
He has been instrumental in issuing 50 diplomatic passports and over four lakh fresh travel documents to the general public. But, the Regional Passport Officer, Chennai, G. Mathi Vathanan, is yet to have one passport for himself.
An M. Tech degree holder from the Indian Institute of Technology, Madras, and B.E. (Mechanical) from Guindy Engineering College, the unassuming Mr. Vathanan chose the Indian Administrative Service (IAS) and joined the Orissa cadre in 1994.
Though belonging to the IAS, he has been holding a post, which is normally held by officers of Indian Foreign Service (IFS). Mr. Vathanan, in a chat with T.S.Shankar, recapitulates his journey to the Regional Passport Office and shares his experiences and the challenging measures initiated by him to expedite the issuance of the travel document besides making this the sought after Central Government Office in Chennai.
IT WAS A different kind of workspot for me from the post of a District Collector, Ganjam, to be the Regional Passport Officer, Chennai. As a Collector, only on the Grievance Redress Day on every Monday, my office would draw a lot of aggrieved public. But at the Regional Passport Office, at any given point of time, there are at least over 500 persons on all working days. This crowd is not seasonal. But on all the days, all the time. Here, every person's problems and issues are different. Attending to his or her specific complaints and redressing them quickly is the most challenging job", explains the 38-year-old official who hails from Vandurayanpet village in Chidambaram taluk in Tamil Nadu.
With a total staff strength of 150 and with all the resource constraints and the "mindset and attitudinal problem of the workforce", Mr. Vathanan has set a benchmark for himself in streamlining the issuance of the travel document. "The Regional Passport Office issues over two lakh passports a year. As many as 1,000 to 2,000 visitors throng our office for varied requirements and problems. My priority is to serve the public. I play a catalytic role as an interface between the public and the officials." "The Regional Passport Office here takes about 60 days to issue a normal fresh passport from the date of submission of the application. This long duration is mainly because of the sharp rise in the number of applications resulting from increasing awareness among the public of the value of having travel documents. We now have about 15 counters offering various categories of services, including one dedicated to senior citizens. I have taken steps to provide comfort to waiting passport seekers by air-conditioning the visitors area and providing seating arrangements, besides introducing the token system", said the passport officer, who assumed charge in December 2001.
Referring to the tout menace, Mr. Vathanan candidly admits that the problem can never be eradicated but only reduced. "The only way is to further open up and liberalise the procedures and make the system as transparent as possible. I strongly feel that the latest Information Technology explosion has, to a large extent, helped us make much headway in achieving this goal". "We have decentralised the issuance of application forms and enabled downloading of the forms and other information from the Internet. A bi-lingual web site (passport.tn.nic.in) was commissioned last August for answering most of the frequently asked queries", he said, adding that a special help counter had been functioning to respond to online and telephonic representations. On handling of bulk passports through travel agencies, he explains that he has brought in limitations. "At present, we have imposed a limit of five applications per agency and we have about 188 authorised travel agencies approved by the Ministry of External Affairs which can submit the applications under this category".
Pointing out that a comprehensive training programme was being imparted to all the staff, especially those in the front-line handling the public interface to provide customer delight, Mr. Vathanan said space had been the major constraint for the Regional Passport Office. In this regard, he said a 15,000 sq.ft area on the annexe building of the Immigration Office located within the same Shastri Bhavan complex had been identified. "We plan to shift all wings dealing with the public to the new large space very soon".
What about getting a passport for himself ?
"After nearly three years of my tenure, now only I have filled up an application form to obtain one passport. In fact, if my people in my village know about this development, this itself will be a cause of a celebration. I do not have any immediate plans to travel abroad", Mr.Vathanan says.
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Life
Bangalore
Chennai
Coimbatore
Delhi
Hyderabad
Kochi
Madurai
Thiruvananthapuram
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