The All India Passport Employees Association has demanded posting of passport office employees in the entire Indian mission abroad to handle passport related matters.
According to the Association, the Indian missions carry out local recruitment, bring people on deputation from other organisations but have always ignored the legitimate plea of the passport employees for posting at Indian missions.
The Association has been demanding at least a minimum of 15 per cent of their strength in Indian missions, which is repeatedly being assured but not implemented.
This was highlighted in a memorandum submitted to the visiting Parliamentary Committee at Kochi recently in which the Association also raised various other issues relating to functioning of passport offices in the country.
Manpower shortage
They pointed out that the workload of employees has increased with the introduction of various new schemes such as tatkal, time bound issue and so on.
The passport offices had catered to about 60 lakh applications in 2009 without any substantial increase in manpower.
In 2002, the passport offices processed about 27 lakh applications with the strength of 1,885 operational staff.
Mr V.C. Prabhakaran, Secretary of the Kochi unit of the association, said that the employees have been demanding upgradation of technology through Government agency and create a new technical cadre apart from increasing manpower for smooth functioning of passport offices.
This will help comply with all the new schemes being introduced from time to time and also help handle the technical software by the government directly.
He pointed out that the 36 passport offices in the country had generated a revenue of Rs 600 crore in 2009 against Rs 270 crore in 2002.
outsourcing
The Association also alleged that outsourcing of passport jobs to private players authorised to handle the software would result in leakage of important confidential information of the passport holders.
The handling of passports has always been held by the Government directly across the world and India is perhaps the first country to hand it over to private players, he said.
Referring to the introduction of Passport Seva Kendra (PSK), he said the recommendation for opening at places outside of passport offices has not been accepted.
The intention of the PSK is to reach to the people and extend hurdle-free service. However, concentrating in cities and at places where passport office exists, defeats the very purpose of its creation, he said.
He also pointed out that the faulty passport printing machines at the Kochi office have resulted in the delay of delivering passports to applicants only within 60 days against 25 days up to June 2010.