Visa call centres for Italian embassy

The Italian embassy in India has decided to outsource its visa services to VFS (India) Pvt Ltd, a specialist outsourcing agency.

Antonio Armellini, Italian ambassador to India, on Thursday announced that the new visa call centres will be operational by August 16 this year.

"We hope it will be made more easier and more frequent for any Indian traveller to travel to Italy," Armellini said.

VFS (India), a subsidiary of the Swiss company Kuoni Travel Group that also owns the SOTC group, works with foreign diplomatic missions and is already working with the American Consulate in west India and the Australian High Commission.

"We will handle all the administrative processes of visa application procedure," Jervis D'Souza, head of operations (India), VFS (India), said.

While the company will accept applications and provide information, the processing will be done by the Italian embassy.

Student visas, diplomatic passport holders and adoption cases will continue to be routed directly to the Embassy. The company will charge Rs 350 as service charges.

The Italian call centres will be located at the four metros as well as Jalandhar, Banglaore and Cochin. The company will also provide helplines and online appointment scheduling facility.

The Italian embassy last year cleared more than 30,000 visas and hopes the number will increase this year with the introduction of this service, the first of its kind by the Italian embassy.

Citing the reason for this move, Mr Armellini said, "India is the outsourcing capital of the world. So it was natural to choose it as the first country for the outsourcing service."

There will be fast track procedures for bodies representing the corporate sector like FICCI and CII as well as the travelling community, Armellini said.

The Italian national carrier Alitalia had earlier on July 10 started daily flights six days a week between New Delhi and Milan, apart from the existing six weekly flights between Mumbai and Milan.