Expansion of Pakistan Consulate to begin next year

dubai — A major expansion of the Pakistan Consulate in Dubai will begin in 2019 to accommodate more people and provide parking spaces for visitors, a senior official said.

Pakistan’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs has approved the budget for the construction of the new consulate under the Public Sector Development Programme (PSDP) for 2018-19, said Syed Javed Hassan, Consul-General of the Pakistan Consulate in Dubai. “The government has asked for a design proposal for the building. Once the design is approved, the tender will be floated, a process of six to eight months. The whole project will take around 18 months to complete,” Hassan said last Tuesday at the Pakistan Economic Forum, hosted by the Pakistan Business Council to introduce its newly elected members.

The existing facility, Hassan said, cannot even accommodate 100 people. With the extension project, the facility’s hall on the ground floor will be able to fit up to 400 people who come for the issuance and renewal of their passports and national identity cards. New parking spaces will also be built.

“Once the new building becomes operational, all the people will have to sit in one hall. There will be counters, just like in banks, for passport, Nadra (National Database and Registration Authority), and document attestation; so, they won’t have to go anywhere,” Hassan told Khaleej

Times on the sidelines of forum. He added that around 60-80 basement parking slots would be made available for the visitors.

There are approximately 1.5 million Pakistanis currently living across the UAE and around 100 semi-skilled Pakistani nationals come to the country daily, he said.