| The “one window” principle can turn into a single queue The “anti-corruption” component in the reform of the passport and visa service starting today in Moscow, it turns out, is not as great as the head of the capital’s Central Internal Affairs Directorate, Vladimir Pronin, tried to present at a meeting of the city government on Tuesday. Let us recall that the chief police officer of Moscow, explaining to city governors the purpose of merging the visa and registration departments (OVIR) and passport offices, promised them “to remove all commercial structures that allegedly helped people in processing documents for a fee.” That is, to eradicate the intermediaries who assisted in obtaining foreign passports, and thereby stop “not entirely legal contacts of passport and visa service employees with commercial structures.” However, yesterday, the deputy head of the Central Internal Affairs Directorate, Major General Vladimir Popov, who was explaining the objectives of the reform to journalists, involuntarily admitted that his immediate superior had gotten carried away. Judging by Mr. Popov’s words, this is not about the liquidation of intermediary firms, but only about the expulsion to the streets of those commercial structures that were based under the same roof with OVIRs. “Unfortunately, we cannot stop their activities, we can only evict them from our premises,” complained the deputy head of the Central Internal Affairs Directorate. “However, such offices will not stop their activities, since they operate on completely legal grounds.”
Only intermediaries will now have to establish “not entirely legal contacts” with other services. From May 20, according to the order of the Central Internal Affairs Directorate, all 35 OVIRs in the capital must cease their work, and their functions will be transferred to passport and visa departments at 126 district police departments. These same new structures, created on the basis of passport offices, must now be contacted by Muscovites who wish to obtain the documents necessary for traveling abroad.
“The main point of such a reorganization is that the provision of services to the population in their passportization, registration, provision of residence permits, and issuance of various passport and visa documentation is carried out according to the “single window” principle,” explained Mr. Popov. According to him, such a restructuring is beneficial not so much to law enforcement agencies as to citizens - if only because the number of registration points will quadruple. The list of documents required to obtain a foreign passport remains the same. True, such a merger of OVIRs and regional passport offices into a “single window” will certainly give rise to a single queue - after all, now those wishing to travel abroad will have to wait for documents together with those who came to apply for a general passport, foreigners wishing to obtain a residence permit, or non-residents receiving temporary registration in Moscow.
General Popov, naturally, is optimistic and believes that there should be no queues. In his opinion, merging two divisions into one, on the contrary, will significantly reduce the time required to complete documents. However, the deputy head of the Central Internal Affairs Directorate did not rule out the possibility of changing the work schedule of the new passport and visa departments. The working day, according to him, will remain 12-hour, but it will begin not at 9 a.m., but at 8.
The Central Internal Affairs Directorate promises that the new structures will begin their work without delay. “The work to locate passport and visa departments is being carried out with the support of the Moscow mayor’s office, and local authorities are providing assistance for urgent repairs of the premises,” said Vladimir Popov. The general considers the week-long “failure” in the work of OVIR, which already last week refused to accept documents (and this on the eve of the holiday season!), to be “isolated violations.” According to him, both the heads of OVIRs and the heads of the new passport and visa departments were instructed not to stop receiving citizens for a single day. “If a person submitted documents to the OVIR, for example, on May 18, he need not worry - they will definitely be issued to him on time, though already at the air defense department at the regional police department,” explained the major general.
Let us recall that the order of the Ministry of Internal Affairs of Russia “On organizational issues and structural development of apparatuses, divisions and organizations of the system of internal affairs bodies of the Russian Federation,” according to which all OVIRs and passport and visa services should be united, was issued on November 20, 2002. Many regions of the country began to implement it almost immediately, and until today, Moscow remained the only subject of the federation that maintained separate structures for issuing only foreign passports. Anna ShPAK |
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