By EuAsiaNews,
Warsaw : Embassy of India in Warsaw has become the 40th Indian mission which has opted for outsourcing the visa facilities to a private company.
A policy which the Indian Ministry of External Affairs had formulated a couple of years ago is gradually being implemented by Indian embassies abroad.
A joint venture started by Diwakar Agarwal’s Visa Processing Services of the BLS Group, New Delhi along with Weco Travels of Poland has been assigned to do the job.
While inaugurating the new office premises near the Indian Embassy, Indian ambassador to Poland Deepak Vohra said, ” with the changing times, the Indian Mission in Warsaw has also opted to outsource its visa services to a well-reputed company which has all the required experience to handle the facilities properly”.
“Indo-Polish relations have developed and matured in a big way and the load factor of the issuing the visas was too much for a small mission.”
“The Embassy had issued around 17,000 visas last year to Polish nationals. The number is likely to cross more than 20,000.Obviously the bulk of our time and energy was being utilised on visa and consular matters and thus other important sections of the embassy such as commercial political and cultural were not getting proper attention because of limited manpower.Now onwards we can concentrate on our main work to promote Indo-Polish relationsn, ” he added.
The profile of India in Poland has gone up by many notches over the years. The trade between the two countries has crossed one billion US dollars last year as compared to 200 million US dollars in 2002.
With the recent visit of Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk to India,there is a big scope to increase cooperation between the two countries.
The main purpose of Tusk’s visit to India was to woo the Indian businessmen to invest in Poland.
Infosys, a big Indian Information Technology company has agreed to increase its operations in Poland and it will recruit another 550 people for its Polish operations by next year and thus there will be around 1500 working for this company in Poland.
J.J. Singh, the vice president of this newly formed company has assured both Polish nationals and Indian community that this company will maintain a higher stranded of efficiency and now onwards a Pole will get an Indian visa after three working days not seven as it was the practise earlier.
“This is indeed a right step in the right direction,” observed Joanna, a visa seeker.
“Now there are proper facilities and a proper seating arrangements in a comfortable hall along with the provision for cold and hot drinks,” she added.