New Delhi, Jan 23 (PTI) The home ministry will hire 1,000officials who will be deployed at immigration counters inDelhi's Indira Gandhi International airport in a bid to endserpentine queues and ease travel woes, officials said today.
The competent authority has given approval to the Bureauof Immigration for appointing 1,000 immigration assistantson a contractual basis, a home ministry official said.
Approval has also been given for the conversion of 350posts from higher to lower grade, thereby giving more scope torecruit ex-servicemen from the Intelligence Bureau and CentralArmed Police Force on contractual basis.
The deployment of additional personnel will augmentmanpower strength at immigration counters to enable the staffto provide professional and courteous service to travellers,an official said.
He did not specify the time frame for when this wouldhappen.
There has been a 30 per cent increase in internationalpassengers at the IGI airport in the last two years, withserpentine queues at immigration desks, another official said.
The government has a policy to encourage foreigners tocome to India for tourism, medical tourism, business andstudies and several initiatives have been taken to improvevisa and immigration services to provide them with a pleasantexperience, the official said.
The decisions will substantially improve immigrationservices at IGI airport, facilitating not only foreignerscoming to India but also Indians travelling abroad.
According to officials, each passenger spends about90 seconds at an immigration counter. Immigration authoritiesare planning to reduce this to 30 seconds, but that will takesome time, they said.
The government plans to increase the number ofoperational immigration counters at the airport from 85 to95 by month-end.
Besides, 25 additional counters for electronic visa (e-visa) facility will also be made functional by January-end,for which the Bureau of Immigration is making arrangements formanpower and other infrastructure as planned, the officialsaid. PTI ACBMIN.
This is unedited, unformatted feed from the Press Trust of India wire.