The Government has claimed there is no passport backlog despite bringing in emergency measures to tackle the soaring number of applications.
An extra 250 staff have been redeployed to frontline tasks in the Passport Office to tackle the 12-year high in applications that unions claim has led to a 500,000 backlog.
They are working extra hours, seven days a week to make sure the applications are dealt with, according to Immigration Minister James Brokenshire.
However, the Government has continued to insist there is no backlog.
Union bosses have claimed the Home Office has a "track record" of denying delays and said the Passport Office was in crisis.
Pictures taken by a disillusioned worker in the Liverpool passport office show tens of thousands of applications waiting to be dealt with.
One MP said thousands of families face having their summer holiday plans ruined because documents were not being prepared in anything like the normal time.
Some families who want to make sure their documents are returned in time for them to go on holiday face paying extra for a faster service - up to £55.50 on top of the £72.50 standard fee.
Mr Brokenshire admitted the Passport Office did make a profit from those who elected to use the faster services.
Three million passports have already been issued this year, with officials processing an average of 18,000 applications a day over the last two months.
Mike Jones, from the PCS Union said: "There are half a million applications that are waiting within the Passport Office at the moment.
"That figure is raised steeply over a number of months. The Home Office and the Passport Office used to have strategies in place for when the figure reached 150,000, that they would put contingency plans in to deal with those amounts."
He told Radio 4's Today programme: "Now we have seen the figures are up to 500,000 and rising at the moment. Even all the contingencies that they are trying to put in place, we are still seeing that figure rising, so there is clearly a crisis going on within the Home Office and the Passport Office as well."
Mr Brokenshire said: "It is certainly fair to say the Passport Office has seen a significant increase in demand for its service during the months of this year between January and now.
"The figures that I've seen show that's showing at around a 12-year high."
He insisted the number of people working at the Passport Office had increased by 300.
Paul Pugh, chief executive of the Passport Office, said more than 97% of straightforward applications were being processed within the target turnaround time of three weeks, with 99% processed within a month.
"We've been experiencing exceptional early summer demand for passports, in part due to the improving economy and a rise in holiday bookings," he said.
Labour's Geoffrey Robinson, the MP for Coventry North West, claimed the Government had left it so late to react to what he called a "burgeoning problem" that there was not enough time to deal with it before the start of the summer getaway.
"The nub of the problem lies in the cuts the Government has made," he said.
Anda sedang membaca artikel tentang
Passport Delay Denied: Emergency Plan In Place
Dengan url
http://gagalcoba.blogspot.com/2014/06/passport-delay-denied-emergency-plan-in.html
Anda boleh menyebar luaskannya atau mengcopy paste-nya
Passport Delay Denied: Emergency Plan In Place
namun jangan lupa untuk meletakkan link
Passport Delay Denied: Emergency Plan In Place
sebagai sumbernya
0 komentar:
Posting Komentar