|
|
|
|
|
|
Subscribe for the latest News, Events and Information.
|
Click Here To Enter Your Content
|
|
|
The Natural Queue for Passport Acquisition Creates Artificial Corruption
By Sabina Jafarli
|
| Some of these residents say they had been waiting on line for 14 hours to apply for a passport |
It’s 9 o’clock and a long line of people stretches around the Passport office in central Baku. Some began to line up at 2 a.m. in order to increase their chances of submitting their applications for an international passport. Many of the hundreds of people will be turned away.
A middle-aged man had lost all hope of getting inside this day due to his late arrival: “I’m a businessman. My passport has expired and I have to renew it in order to be able to go to Iran for my business. I went directly to the department to be informed on how the passport can be acquired within one week. The fee, they said, is 210 manats. However I still have to wait in the long queue to get registered. The police officers want 40 manats for getting inside without waiting in the queue. Dealers however do the same job for 50 manats. They are in close contact with the police officers”.
Vasif Movsumov, head of Anti-Corruption Fund states certain complaints: “Queuing at passport registrations creates artificial corruption. Officials and citizens hinder the anticorruption process. Therefore, the struggle against bribery is not always successful. Another problem is that citizens are afraid of complaining. The reason is that people who complain of corruption based on law are not protected by the law,” he said.
According to Alovsat Aliyev, head of Migration center and ex-chief of Passport and Registration Department, says there is convenient situation provided for corruption at the Passport Office. “So far, passports had been issued in 9 registration centers only, however, this number should be 84. These kinds of circumstances are quite convenient for MIA, because their officials can easily take bribes.”
The citizens who had been in queue since 2 a.m. could only get inside around 9 or 10 a.m. On this particular day, around 11:15 a.m. one of the officers pushed the late comers back, saying not to wait in vain. Those, he said, can come again on Friday.
At this point a conflict arose between the police and the people in queue. A woman, who didn’t want to give her name, shouts she’ll wait till 12 o’clock. “The police officers deliberately frighten people and tell them there will be no time for us. The reason is they want us to pay them. I was here on Monday and they were registering people at 12.” Another woman, who identified herself as Palina, said she would return to her nearby house and come back and wait in line the next morning.
Aliyev, the former director of the passport office, said that waiting in queue is not for officials: “There are people who wait in queue from 4 AM. Do you think any official will send their relative to wait on queue at that time? Those who don’t have money and are unaware of their rights are the ones who wait in queue. People don’t follow their principles. There is a huge amount of money involved here”.
According to Article Four of the Statement on the approval of the Law on Immigration, Emigration and Passports citizens should get their passports from the police department in their own districts. But there are not passport offices in each region. Ehsan Zahidov, the head of the press office at the Ministry of Internal Affairs, which administers passports, says that establishing a passport office in all regions requires a lot of funds. However, when asked how much money is required to open one passport office, he replied that he didn’t know. Other officials at the MIA also said they didn’t know the cost.
As for the long lines at the main passport office in Baku, MIA press spokesman, Zahidov said that appropriate measures have already been taken. “The reason for the huge number of people in queue is the need for an international passport. What can we do? Should we go to people and ask them not to wait in queue? So far, we only have 9 regional departments in Baku, Guba, Shaki, Goychay, Shirvan, Ganja, Barda, Nakhchivan and Lankaran,” he said.
Ayyub Garabaghli, a student, who was waiting on a friend who was getting a passport, said that he got his own passport two years ago without waiting in the long queue: “I’ve got some relatives in Georgia, and I used to visit them often, therefore, I needed a passport. I was in queue for two hours back then. Now my friend is here for his passport. I say, I’m lucky, otherwise I, too, would have to wait,” Garabaghli said.
Rena Safaraliyeva, executive director of Transparency Azerbaijan says you’re not supposed to pay a bribe to get your passport. “MIA Passport and Registration Department has carried out certain structural reforms for prevention of corruption. And bribe taking is prevented in this system.
However, Safaraliyeva says that another form of corruption, which includes abuse, is widespread in Azerbaijan. “Most of the complaints that our organization receives relate to the long queues,” she said.
Alimammad Nuriyev, president of Constitutional Research Fund and coordinator of the NGO Anti-corruption Coalition says the passport office needs to extend its hours of service to accommodate more people each day. “Our organization has carried out inquiries among 300 people who’ve stood in queue in Baku Passport and Registration Department. We’ve also visited regional departments in Shirvan and Lankaran. The reason for queues is the limited time allocated for registration. There are people who wait in queue and sell their places. We also visited the cash office of the department during monitoring. The applications here are issued without receipt, though sold for 20-40 kopeks. The amount of the official fee is not stated on information boards,” Nuriyev said.
Eighty-six year old ex-prosecutor Nuraddin Jafarov got his passport two years ago. He’s displeased with the bribery going on at the passport office and is upset by what he calls the rude behavior of the police officers there. “My grandson studies in Moscow. I frequently go there. Now his passport has expired and he can’t come here to renew it. I asked Firudin Babayev, the former deputy chief, about other possible options for getting a passport. And he told me they would not be able to help. I know my rights though and told him I’ll complain if I was not provided with appropriate information,” he said.
During this conversation with Jafarov, he described how, two years ago, he said he was struck by Babayev at the passport office. “Firudin Babayev hit me on the neck. I fell down and broke my leg. This is the attitude of an officer to a disabled war veteran,” Jafarov said.
Jafarov says as a result of those injuries he has undergone two years of treatment at his own expense. “I had to spend three or four thousand manats. I attended court for six months, but my claim was not accepted. They wanted to give me one or two thousand manats if I would stop my claims, to which I said I prefer justice to money. I submitted my claims to Ministry of Internal Affairs, to Baku City Prosecutor’s Office, Ombudsman’s Office, and even to Supreme Court. Babayev found six false witnesses who testified that I fell down myself. I was physically unable to turn to the European Court. Babayev was dismissed from his job, but was appointed head of the Immigration Department within the Ministry of Internal Affairs. This is the same officer who talked to me in a rude way,” he said.
Arzuman Aliyev, the director of the passport office, said about two million people received international passports during the first five months of this year and that it generated about 50 million manats.
Alovsat Aliyev, the former head of the passport office, calculated what he says he believes is the approximate scope of corruption based on those figures for the first five months of this year: “Considering the statistics for the total number of passports processed only 30% got them legally. The other 70% got passports after paying 250-300 manats. Taking into account the statistical figures for the first five months of this year, about 1.4 million people got their passports through bribes, without waiting in queues. Estimating the amount of a single bribe at 300 manat, within the first five months the approximate scope of corruption is about 420 million manats,” Aliyev said
Alovsat Aliyev said that the passports being distributed today may be obsolete in the future due to the growing use of biometric data being used in passports. “The Azerbaijani government is discussing using biometric information in passports. Thus, there is no guarantee that passports will remain the same for the coming 10 years. To my thinking, the European Council will prolong this process,” he said.
An official at the passport office said there are currently discussions about converting to biometric passports at some point in the future. Biometric passports include hand and finger prints as well as eye and facial data stored on a chip inside the passport.
|
|
|
|