KOCHI: Despite global recession and employment- related crisis in Gulf regions, there has been an increase in the number of passports issued from the Regional Passport Office in Kochi last year.Compared to 2010, there has been an increase of 2. 26 per cent in the number of passports issued. In 2011, 245439 passports were issued from the Kochi office. However, the increase rate is minimal as 2010 recorded a rise of 9.4 per cent compared to that in 2009.“The increase rate is slightly lower than what we had in 2010. This is mainly because of the global recession observed in 2011. However, when economy started to recover from the recession in the last quarter of the year, the number of passports issued also increased,” B Sreekumar, Regional Passport Officer said.In 2010, the number of passport issued from the Kochi office were 239997, 9.4 per cent higher than 2009. With the advent of Passport Seva Kendras, passport officials believe that the number of passports issued will only increase in the coming days.“We have Passport Seva Kendras in Alappuzha, Kottayam, Aluva and Kochi. We will start another one Thrissur this month. At these Seva Kendras, we process the passports using high tech computers. This will make passport issuing process much faster. About 800 passports will be processed in these Seva Kendras on a daily basis,” an official at the passport office said.
Comments
0 comment