The Directorate General of Immigration and Passports is preparing to launch nationwide doorstep delivery of passports and an artificial intelligence powered chatbot to assist applicants with queries and status tracking, Passports Director General Muhammad Ali Randhawa announced on Sunday, as the department continues its push to shift Pakistan’s passport system away from physical counter dependency toward fully digital service delivery.
On the doorstep delivery initiative, Randhawa confirmed that discussions with a courier service company are actively underway and that an agreement is expected to be formalised before the service goes live. Once the agreement is signed, the facility will be available across the country, with passports of those ready to pay nominal courier charges shipped directly to their addresses from Islamabad. The service will initially be launched within Pakistan, with plans to extend it to overseas Pakistanis in a second phase. For the millions of Pakistanis who currently have to make multiple visits to passport offices or rely on intermediaries to collect their documents, the doorstep delivery model would represent a material improvement in the accessibility and convenience of a service that touches virtually every citizen at some point in their life.
A chatbot will also be launched soon, through which applicants will be able to get guidelines on procedures and document requirements and check the status of their passports after submission. Randhawa added that the digital assistant would also help reduce pressure on the department’s call centre, which is simultaneously being expanded to handle the volume of queries it receives. The chatbot represents a shift toward self-service facilitation that keeps applicants informed throughout the process without requiring them to call or visit in person, addressing one of the most consistent frustrations that citizens have raised about the current system, where limited visibility into application status forces repeated follow-up through congested official channels.
Looking further ahead, the directorate is also giving serious consideration to enabling full online submission of passport applications. Officials are considering either launching a dedicated app similar to NADRA’s Pak-ID or expanding the scope of NADRA’s existing app to accept passport applications, with applicants able to upload previous passports and photographs through the app for registration. The two-option approach reflects a pragmatic acknowledgment that building a standalone passport app from scratch carries higher development and adoption risk than integrating the functionality into an established platform that Pakistanis already use, with NADRA’s Pak-ID having demonstrated that biometrically verified digital identity services can achieve significant uptake among the public. Together, the doorstep delivery service, the AI chatbot, the expanded call centre, and the potential online application pathway form a coherent digital transformation roadmap for a department that has historically been one of the more friction-heavy touchpoints in Pakistan’s public service landscape.
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