Rajeev Shahare, Indian Embassy Minister and Deputy chief of mission, on Saturday officially inaugurated here the new Indian passport and attestation outsourcing center offering embassy services to Indian nationals in Eastern Province. “The new outsourcing office is in line with India's policy to reach out to the expanding large Indian communities in different parts of the world and to provide efficient and transparent services in a comfortable environment to the Indian community with minimum additional financial liability,” said Shahare. Two embassy mission officials from Riyadh, Shahare said, will be deployed at the center regularly on Thursdays and Fridays in order to monitor and to provide attestation facility. The rented office premises for Indian counselor service mission in Eastern Province near the International Indian School Dammam was closed down on Friday. The mission has entered into a subcontract with Dubai based VFS Global for outsourcing its passport, visa and consular services. Indian consulate in Jeddah outsourced its consular services last December and an outsourcing office started functioning in Riyadh on Feb. 11. The new center is located at New Al-Adama District, Al-Rashed Al-Mutlaq Building, Shop # 5, Ground Floor near Al-Muna Internationl Indian School. The center will be working from Thursday through Sunday from 8.30 A.M. to 5 P.M. and will receive passport applications for renewal and attestation of consular documents in the initial stage. SR15 will be charged for passport related jobs and SR10 will be charged for any type of attestation documents by VFS Global.
