Sunday, June 26, 2005

Went to get my Passport on Saturday 25th June. The Passport Office in Saddar Karachi is open from 9:00 am till 2:30 pm, all days except Friday, when they close at noon. I got there at 8:30 am so I could be amongst the first in line. If you are male, you should definitely go early. They ushered us in at 8:55 am. There are two lines for men, one for ladies, and one for senior citizens (60 and above).

I got my new Machine Readable, RDIF-enabled Passport at 9:27 am. The famed "religion column" is on the Annotations page along with the previous passport number. The passport also contains a letter, sans punctuation, from the Ministry of Interior:



You can collect a passport for an immediate family member as long as you have their original ID card and the all important TOKEN. Signatures at the back of the token are mandatory. The "brokers" outside charge Rs. 200 to retrieve passports. My poor mother has still not gotten her passport, even though it is ready. They have misplaced her datasheet (the printout with all her information and signature) and can't locate it anywhere. They have looked everywhere, including at Awami Markaz. Why can't they just print another copy?

Posted by BeanZ | Permalink: 6:08 PM |