Passport seekers face problems at Ghaziabad

Ghaziabad, April 22 (IANS) Passport seekers from western Uttar Pradesh Monday complained of poor service at an application processing centre managed here by Tata Consultancy Services (TCS).

People from across 13 districts of western Uttar Pradesh are forced to remain in queues for seven to eight hours to get their applications processed as there is an inadequate number of working counters, it has been alleged.

They also complained of lack of sitting arrangements even for the aged passport seekers and adequate arrangement of water at the Passport Seva Kendra (PSK) situated at Pacific Business Park in Sahibabad area here.

Nikhil Gautam from TCS claimed that "Beyond the entrance of our office, we cannot provide facilities to the visitors while at A level counters just at the entrance, we try to clear the queue at the earliest hence there is no need for the sitting facilities".

Additional Regional Passport Officer Veena Sharma refused to speak.

On the other hand, passport seekers made a slew of complaints against the service provider and poor infrastructure at the centre.

"We reached at 9 a.m. and it took 8 hours to process our application at three counters. During these eight hours my 65-year brother Niyamat Ali had to wait outside without any facilities for visitors," said Liyaquat Ali from Saharanpur.

Old and young people are forced to sit on the floor without any water facility, Ali said.

"We have 29 counters at A level, eight counters at B level and six counters at C level to deal with about 500 to 600 applicants a day. We do admit there is a bottleneck at C level so the applicants are suffering slackness in the process," Gautam of TCS admitted.

Contradicting Gautam's claim Rajiv of Aligarh, who was hearing the conversation, claimed that Gautam was hiding facts.

He alleged that at "B level there are only four counters operational and at C level only three counters are operational".

The service provider agency process the application at A level and the rest is dealt by government officials directly, claimed a source inside the office and the bottleneck is there.

"It was good when the office was at CGO Complex in Ghaziabad where regional passport officer was readily available but here at this corner no one is to look at the applicants problem," said Hamid Ali of Bulandshahr.