LAHORE: At least 25 per cent of the passport applicants, opting for courier facility for home delivery of the travel document at the Garden Town Passport Office here, are facing a great deal of inconvenience allegedly because of procedural lapses and non-cooperation from the department.

The courier service, TCS, blames the counter staff at the passport ofHce for the problems being faced by the applicants.

TCS officials allege that the passport counter staff has been leaving the applications unmarked in their system, or assigning them against some other person`s token, causing confusion resulting in non-delivery of the document.

The passport officials, on the other hand, blame the courier service for not delivering the passports in time to the applicants and passing the bucl< to them.

Interestingly, the TCS authorities have failed to launch service at Abbot Road and Shahdara passport offices despite passage of two-and-a-half months since the service launch in the provincial capit al.

A TCS employee associated with home delivery service told Dawn on Monday that the third-step data entry operators were not marking the applications of those opting for payment of Rs250 per passport for home delivery, which eventually made applicants to visit the office to collect their passports.

`How can we deliver a passport at home when the application is not duly marked by the passport staff and eventually the applicant faces inconvenience, besides sufferingmonetary loss`, the employee said, adding the matter was taken up with the passport authorities many times for resolving the issue, but to no avail.

He said it appeared that the passport staff was deliberately failing the home delivery service, adding that on average two to three nondelivery complaints were being received at the passport office daily.

He said since launch of the home delivery service in January, the TCS counter was not having more than 70 clients a day, while the company expected atleast200.

Admitting the courier service had some capacity issues, the employee said that only applicants from specific areas, where the service was regular, were being entertained for home delivery, while others belonging to remote and rural areas were being refused. The service had also been closed for the child applicants after problems encountered in deliveries to those with divorced parents, he added.

A source in the department was of the view that the home delivery service launched in five big cities might have suffered a set back because of glitches on the part of the department, TCS and National Bank of Pakistan. So far no understanding had been reached among these three stakeholders for making the courier fee payment online, he added.

Abbott Road office Assistant Director Riaz Shah said the TCS authorities were not launching the service counter at the office despite being repeatedly asked for it.

Immigration and Passports Director Central Region (Punjab) Ikhlag Ahmad Qureshi could not be reached for comments.