4,000 passports to be issued online on daily basis 

KABUL (Pajhwok): The Central Passport Office (CPO) has decided to double its capacity for online passport printing and distribution from 2,000 to 4,000 a day, an official said on Tuesday.

Earlier, the CPO said 4,000 passports were distributed daily, including 2,000 issued online. The remaining applicants were government officials, athletes, businesspeople and individuals with official letters, it added.

According to a report released earlier by Pajhwok Afghan News, CPO issues 4,000 passports daily, but still hundreds of thousands of applicants have to wait for months for their turn to go through the actual process of getting the document.

First, an applicant is required to fill out an online form that gives him/her the exact date and time for appearing in the Passport Office for the process of registration and biometrics.

CPO head Noorullah Patman told Pajhwok Afghan News it had been decided to increase the number of passports issued daily online from 2,000 to 4,000 in order to address applicants’ problems in the best possible manner.

He admitted some applicants had to wait for a long time for approaching the passport office to meet formalities. To resolve the problem, he said, it had been decided to raise the number of passports issued on a daily basis.

However, the official did not say how much time applicants would now need to get passports under the new policy Relevant officials had been instructed to facilitate the submission of applications online so that people could easily apply, he concludd.

hz/nh/mud