A shortage of staff at the Ghaziabad Passport Seva Kendra (PSK) is resulting in long queues of people applying for passports.
Regional Passport Officer Sita Ram Yadav said the present skeletal staff is not able to cope with the almost 600 applicants each day from 13 districts of Western Uttar Pradesh.
"We need about six to eight staff at the C-level counters (screening level), which are currently manned by only three to four employees," Yadav said. The B- and C-level counters are manned by government employees, while the A-level counter is operated by employees of Tata Consultancy Services.
He said that at A-level counters, where documents for passport are submitted, each file is cleared within 15 minutes to half an hour. However, at B- and C-level counters, which are manned by government employees, applicants have to wait for nearly ninety minutes. The reason for the delay is the shortage of staff.
Yadav said that another cause of delay in issuing passports was the slow process of police verification report (PVR). The passport office is working on receiving the PVR online to shorten the procedure from 20 days to 14 days or earlier.
PVRs from Agra and Noida have already started coming in online while PVRs from Ghaziabad will be online soon. The department is working to get PVRs online from all the 13 districts.