Italian Ambassador Antonio Alessandro has urged all work visa seekers to be patient understanding the embassy’s difficulties as currently at least 20,000 Bangladeshi passports are being kept at the embassy in Dhaka for verification, reports BSS.

“I invite everyone to be patient and to be understandable of the difficulties (at embassy) … So, my call to them is to, again to be patient and to entrust themselves only to official agents,” he told BSS at an interview on Thursday while describing the huge backlog at the visa issuing process.

“This surge in this volume was unexpected, and the embassy was too small and the human resources were not able to cope with this surge of applications,” said the ambassador.

Regarding the backlog of passports, Alessandro said there are at least 20,000 passports in the Embassy right now while there are many more applicants waiting outside for an appointment.

As his attention was drawn to a recent media report that alleged more than 100,000 passports are kept at the embassy, the Ambassador ruled out the claim and said, “Certainly not it (the number of passport) is 100,000 … I have no idea who gave this number.”

The envoy said the main reason of the delayed visa processing is that the consular section found at least one in five applications is accompanied by a problematic and irregular document.

“Why we have not been able to process all the applications in time is (because) many applications were accompanied by some false or illegal or counterfeited documents. Our estimate is one in five applications is accompanied by a problematic and irregular document,” he said.

Asked how long it will take to clear the entire backlog, the ambassador said that it is difficult to give an answer on when they will be able to clear the entire backlog as it depends on the problems that the embassy finds in each application.

He said the community of Bangladesh in Italy becomes larger and becomes more integrated and so attracts a number of people for family reunion, business tourism or family visits.

The ambassador said work visa is one category and there are other categories of visas - there are tourist visa, business visa, study visa, family visas and all these categories are growing in large numbers.

“All this is putting significant pressure on our embassy, and that explains the delay, because work visa is important, but also these other categories are also important, and our visa office has to work for all categories. So, I recognize that there are delays, and of course, we apologize to the public for this delay,” he said.

Under normal circumstances, the Italian visa system works with the passport and the applicant leaves the passport through the VFS Global. Then VFS Global brings this application and the passport to the Embassy.

“Now we are not keeping the passport anymore. So, applicants for working visa now only leave photocopy of the passport. They keep the passport with them so that they can travel and use the passport for other purposes,” he said.

Bd-pratidin English/Tanvir Raihan