Karwar: In the last 20 days, the Post Office Passport Seva Kendra (POPSK) at Ankola has received more than 140 applications, but most of them have not been processed due to technical problems.
In the absence of a passport office in the district earlier, applicants had to travel to Hubballi, Mangaluru or Goa to apply for a passport.
With the inauguration of POPSK, people of Uttara Kannada thought their dreams of getting passports right in their home district would come t r u e. H o w e ve r, d u e t o technical issues and staff crunch at the passport office, s p e e d y p r o c e s s i n g o f a p p l i c a t i o n s s t i l l remains a distant dream.
The district’s first passport office set up at Ankola post office on January 25 was inaugurated by Union Minister Anantkumar Hegde. It is located about 35 km from the district headquarters, Karwar.
In the last 20 days, the POPSK has received 142 applications, but from the day one, the office has been facing technical issues. For last one week, the server has been down and application processing has been stopped completely in the absence of an officer from passport office, sources said.
Similar to other Passport Seva Kendras, all processes related to passports would be held in Ankola POPSK. Once the documents are provided and verification is completed, the passport will be sent to the address of applicant. For the new centre, a total of three staffers, including a supervisor are required. When the centre was opened, there were three staffers, but now there is only one official.
A postal official, who had come on deputation, went back to Belagavi. Meanwhile, a supervisor junior passport officer also went back to his previous place. In the absence of staff from passport office, a postal staffer is running the POPSK from the last one week, the sources said.
According to a senior postal officer from the head post office, Bengaluru regional passport office is not responding to the queries of Ankola POPSK to settle technical issues. However, Bengaluru office has not responded to phone calls and even emails.
Around 30 people have been applying for passports daily at the POPSK for the last few days.