National 2 (Spotlight Weekly)

Official Ordeal

The scarcity of passport books puts the common people under severe strain

By KESHAB POUDEL

"The government does not have any plan to employee us back home. It cannot provide us a passport when we ourselves find a job abroad," said Ram Krishna Thapa, a resident of Salleri, Solukhumbu, 400 km east of Kathmandu. "I am tired of waiting to get a passport even after paying Rs.2000. How efficient is this government, which has not been able to print passport books for the last three months?"

Officials at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs have their own complaints. A deputy protocol, a second-class gazetted officer who is supposed to do productive decision making work, has been assigned to verify the application forms. Surrounded by hundreds of applicants, deputy chief of protocol Jyoti Prasad Adhikary rarely finds time to go to the toilet. He has to convince, satisfy and entertain all kinds of people.

Crowd of passport seekers at MOFA : Access denied?

The offices of most senior and junior officers of the ministry are crowded with anxious applicants. Despite stringent scrutiny at the main gate, crowds of people continue to enter Shital Niwas, which houses the foreign ministry.

From royal family members to the prime minister and from the leader of the opposition to senior politicians, a range of powerful and influential people pass by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs each day. But nobody seems to have noticed the real plight of common citizens, who have to line up for hours to pay the Rs.2,000 fee for the passport.

Hundreds of people from remote districts, including Jumla, Mugu, Dolpa, Humla and Solukhumbu, have spent the last three months waiting to get their passport.

"Since the last one month, I have been roaming around the capital to get my passport. If I don't get it within a week, I will lose my opportunity to work in Malaysia. Although Hakimsaheb has approved my application, I have yet to get the passport," said Jhalman Rokaya, a resident of Mugu, 500 km northwest of Kathmandu.

Although ministry officials claim this is just a temporary shortage, and that applicants will once again begin to receive passports smoothly from the district administration office, many people have grown tired of such assurances. "We have already ordered the passports for printing. After the arrival of first consignment, the crisis will be eased," Foreign Secretary Madhuraman Acharya told SPOTLIGHT.

No one sees the rationale behind the scarcity of the passport books for such a long time. There are hundreds of security presses that can print tens of thousands of passport books in a month. It's strange that a modern press in France can take such a long time to print them.

The scarcity of passports is not a new phenomenon. It has existed for the last four months, since the formation of the "efficient" government by King Gyanendra under the leadership of Prime Minister Lokendra Bahadur Chand.

Many see this as an artificial scarcity created with the intention of discouraging Nepalese workers from going abroad. With the restoration of democracy, people have had easy access to passports, along with other matters. After the dismissal of the elected government and postponement of the elections, the passport crisis has surfaced.

The Ministry of Foreign Affairs has amended regulations and extended the validity of the passport for 10 years. The new regulations will be implement from March 15. Until then, the ministry can expect to see swarms of applicants. As elections remain out of sight, there is nobody to listen to people like Ram Krishna Thapa.