The is total confusion and applicants face issues in timely delivery of passports at the newly ousourced Indian passport and visa services centres.
BLS International centres are facing sorting issues and applicants are panicking as they don't know where their passports are.
The chaos has resulted in some applicants missing their flights.
In some cases, failure to return passports immediately resulted in frantic calls to the police.
Over the past 10 days, Dubai police were called in at least five times to the centre as teething problems continue at the recently established centre, according a Gulf News report.
Indian ambassador to the UAE, MK Lokesh assured that the mission was working to resolve the problems, and services would be restored soon. He was quoted by Khaleej
Times as saying: "We expect the problems to be resolved in a week,” he said. “Some 3,000 passports may have been delayed.
I have instructed officials at the mission that no more delays are acceptable.
These are teething problems and we need to give it time. The last outsource service provider (Empost) took almost nine months to resolve issues,” added MK Lokesh.
Raminder Singh Taneja, Chief Operating Officer of BLS International, the company which handles the passport services, echoed similar comments in the daily.
“The staff at our centres is working hard to restore services and clear the backlog.
Once the backlog is cleared, the time taken to process passports and visa applications will be considerably lesser,” said Raminder.
BLS International began its operations on April 6 with the inaugural of six dedicated BLS centres across the UAE. Eight other collection points authorised to receive documents are located at the Indian Social Centres.
Follow Emirates 24|7 on Google News.
