Foreign Office rolls out apostille attestation service via courier companies

The Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Islamabad and its liaison offices in Karachi and Lahore have collaborated with courier companies to provide document attestation services in a bid to facilitate applicants seeking apostille attestation.

Designated courier companies will collect documents from applicants, which will then be attested by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, as part of this new initiative.

TCS, M&P, Gerry’s, Leopard, and ECS are the courier companies authorised to collect documents for apostille attestation in Islamabad, Lahore and Karachi.

According to a Foreign Office statement, the courier companies are authorised to accept all documents except Power of Attorney.

Earlier in 2023, the government of Pakistan acceded to the Hague Convention Abolishing the Requirement of Legalization for Foreign Public Documents (Apostille Convention) of 1961, the Foreign Office had said.

According to the FO statement, the convention shortens the public document authentication process to a single formality which is the issuance of an authentication certificate called "Apostille" by the designated authority of the country where the document was issued.

"Thus, foreign public documents authenticated by Apostille can be directly presented to the authorities concerned without any other attestation requirement," it added.

The purpose of the convention is to abolish the traditional requirement of legalisation, replacing the often long and costly legalisation process with the issuance of a single Apostille certificate by a Competent Authority in the place where the document originated.