In an effort to make the process of apostille attestation easier for applicants, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Islamabad, together with its liaison offices in Karachi and Lahore, has partnered with courier businesses to offer document attestation services.
As part of this new program, applicants will provide documents to designated courier businesses, who will then attest them by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.
The courier companies authorized to pick up documents for apostille attestation in Islamabad, Lahore, and Karachi include TCS, M&P, Gerry’s, Leopard, and ECS.
The courier businesses are permitted to accept any documents, with the exception of Power of Attorney, according to a Foreign Office statement.
The Hague Convention Abolishing the Requirement of Legalization for Foreign Public Documents (Apostille Convention) of 1961 was ratified by the Pakistani government earlier in 2023.
A single formality, the granting of an authentication certificate known as a “Apostille” by the appropriate authority of the country where the document was issued, completes the public document authentication procedure, according to the FO statement.
“Thus, foreign public documents authenticated by Apostille can be directly presented to the authorities concerned without any other attestation requirement,” it stated.
