: Around 500 Emigration Check Not Required (ECNR) Passports have been impounded by the Madurai Regional Passport Office after officials detected that the applicants had used false or fake documents to get them in order to bypass clearance required from Protector of Emigrants (POE).
Regional PAssport Officer S. Maniswara Raja said people had produced documents to prove taht they had paid Income Tax by showing falsification of accounts of higher income than their actual income. Similarly, they had produced fake SSLC certificate or made fake entries on their old passports of having worked abroad.
“The very purpose of making the illiterate ECR passport holders to go abroad for work after being cleared by POE is only to ensure their safety in foreign soil and to ensure that they are not cheated by the employer or the travel agent here,” Mr. Maniswara Raja said.
The POE not only verifies the genuineness of the passport holder/job aspirant, but also the veracity of the travel agent and the employer. “Thereby, the risk for any inconvenience to the job aspirant, like being cheated by the employer or agent by way of under payment of salary, is reduced,” he said.
The RPO said he had written to Superintendents of Police of various districts seeking action against those travel agents or brokers who enticed guillible job-aspirants and misled them to get passports through fraudulent means. “The job aspirants also lose huge money in the process,” he said.
Mr. Maniswara Raja also wanted the holders of hand-written passports to surrender them and get new machine-readable passports immediately as handthe former were not valid for going abroad.
Many passport applicants try to seek judicial intervention without making any appeal either with the Assistant Passport Officer or second appeal with Regional Passport Officer. Over 2,000 such cases had been filed. The court only directs such people to exhaust the appeal provisions before knocking at the courts. This led only to further delay in getting passports, he added.
People can use the WhatsApp number 8870131225 or toll-free number 1800 258 1800 or 0452 2521204 to get clarifications or 0452 2521205 to lodge complaints.
