ISLAMABAD - The incumbent Director General (DG) of Immigration and Passports Muhammad Safdar is being relieved from his duties as the government has decided to give him an important foreign posting, The Nation has learnt.
The incumbent DG Passports had been given acting charge of the post after his predecessor Zulfiqar Cheema, a PSP officer, had been appointed Inspector General of National Highway and Motorways Police.
The official sources in the passport office said that incumbent DG Passports had recently got issued a diplomatic passport in his name that meant that the government had given him a green signal of an assignment abroad. Muhammad Safdar belongs to Income Tax Group.
Another source in the Ministry of Interior said that perhaps DG Passports was being appointed on a new assignment in Iran.
During the last PPP regime, the backlog of passports at one time had reached one million and the people had to wait for months to get their new passports.
However, the last two DGs Zulfiqar Cheema and Muhammad Safdar played a very effective role to end this backlog and today there is not a single backlog of passport. The passport office has also considerably decreased the time period of delivery of normal and urgent passports.