Claim: The Directorate General of Immigration and Passports has issued a notification announcing an increase in the fees for passport issuance.
Fact: The DGIP announced fees for the issuance of e-passports. The fees for machine-readable passports that are currently issued will remain the same.
Recently circulating news on social media claimed that Pakistan’s Directorate General of Immigration and Passports (DGI&P) has announced an increase in fees for the issuance of passports. Soch Fact Check found this to be misleading. The DGI&P had announced the fee structure for e-passports in the Ordinary category. Ordinary e-passports have not yet been launched. Fees for machine-readable passports (MRPs), which are currently being issued, remain the same. Furthermore, MRPs will remain in circulation indefinitely.
Fact vs Fiction
According to claims on social media, the DGI&P had issued a notification announcing an increase in the fees for Pakistani passports. In some posts, the claim was accompanied by screenshots of a notification regarding fees for e-passports. According to the notification, fees for e-passports range from PKR 9,000 to PKR 40,500, depending on how many pages the passport has, how long it is valid for, and whether or not it is applied for on an urgent basis. Captions accompanying the screenshot declare that there has been an increase in passport fees.
Soch Fact Check found this to be misleading. The directorate posted on its official Twitter account clarifying that there has been no increase in fees for MRPs. The newly announced fees are for e-passports in the Ordinary category, which have yet to be launched.
The DGI&P currently issues MRPs in the Ordinary category. E-passports are an upgrade on MRPs, as they contain various mechanisms that provide additional security to passport holders. While e-passports were launched in March last year, they are not yet commonly issued. Since November 2022, e-passports in the Official/Diplomatic category have started being issued nationwide. However, e-passports in the Ordinary category are issued on a limited basis from the DGI&P’s headquarters in Islamabad.
Ali Nawaz Malik, Director General Media for Pakistan’s Ministry of Interior, confirmed that there has been no change in fees for MRPs. He further stated that, at the moment, the countrywide launch of Ordinary e-passports has been delayed indefinitely. DGI&P will continue to issue Ordinary MRPS for now. Once they are launched, Ordinary e-passports will be issued at the higher fees that have been announced. However, it remains to be decided whether the option to apply for MRPs will remain available to citizens once Ordinary e-passports have been launched. There is currently no increase in fees for MRPs.
Virality
Soch Fact Check was able to identify over 50 posts carrying the claim across Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter. A CrowdTangle analysis of the phrase “passport fees increase” in Urdu yielded 53 posts made over the last week with over 7,900 interactions.
Conclusion: Claims that there has been an increase in fees for Pakistani passports are misleading. The Directorate General for Immigration and Passports recently announced fees for e-passports in the Ordinary category. While these are higher than fees for Ordinary machine-readable passports (MRPs), there has been no increase in fees for MRPs. Furthermore, for now, MRPs will continue to be issued throughout the country.