Issuing a press statement on Sunday, the department said, as per new measures to be implemented from July 6, it will distribute the MRPs from 8:00am to 1:00pm during weekdays at its office to make the distribution process faster. Currently, thousands of service seekers are forced to stay in queue for hours to submit application forms and receive the passports at the department in Kathmandu.

The department has been receiving around 4,000 applications for MRPs on a daily basis after the government decided to withdraw all hand-written passports by September 2015, a deadline set by the International Civil Aviation Organization.

Similarly, the department has also set up a separate office to look after wrongly printed passports due to mistakes of the department itself, where service seekers can apply free of cost and get new passport within three days. According to the Passport Guidelines, service seekers will be charged Rs 500 to correct information on the passports if the mistakes were made by applicants themselves. However, they can get their passport reprinted free of charge if the mistakes were done by department itself.

The department said it is trying to distribute such reprinted passports in just two days.

Similarly, the department is also setting up four more passport processing centres from Monday.

The department said it is also opening a Facebook page where service seekers can comment as well as be updated on new developments.