Increased consular services needed as Indian diaspora abroad rises

NEW DELHI: A steady surge in the Indian population living overseas has resulted in rising demand for Passports and Consular services.

According to VFS Global, the world’s largest outsourcing and technology services specialist for governments and diplomatic missions worldwide, an increasing number of Indians living away from their home country are benefiting from these services.
“Our passports and consular services offering caters to over 7 million Indians across nine countries, — UK, US, Thailand, the Netherlands, Spain, South Africa, Saudi Arabia, France, and Australia, on behalf of the Ministry of External Affairs, Government of India. As per United Nations data for international migration, over 280 million individuals live and work outside their home country and we are now working with 18 governments to provide this essential service in 36 countries” said Jiten Vyas, Chief Commercial Officer of VFS Global.

“We also cater to the growing diasporic population worldwide, through our Citizen and Identity Services portfolio that provides secure, and biometric-enabled services in a variety of application areas such as programmes around national IDs, permits and licensing, apart from passport services,” he added.

The surge in migration also accelerated the demand for document legalisation, birth, death, and marriage registration, and driving licence renewals among others. The VFS Global infrastructure is equipped with a multilingual call centre with trained staff managing email and call queries.

The service has also helped governments deliver safe, high-quality services to expatriates in a hassle-free and convenient manner, wherever they are in the world.

Leveraging on its robust experience in the visa application processing domain, and an extensive global network in over 400 cities and over 140 countries, VFS Global provides governments with holistic, administrative solutions for processing passport applications and provisions of efficient consular services.

“This portfolio has grown seamlessly because we could easily replicate our unique value proposition as the market leader in the visa applications outsourcing sector in this domain,” added Vyas.

According to the Diaspora Alliance, the diaspora population has tripled in just about five decades – from approximately 75 million to over 230 million. (ANI)