Foreign Ministry introduces special arrangements to intensify visa application processing at Petrozavodsk

Press release 217/2008
13 June, 2008

Visa applications at the Petrozavodsk office of the Consulate General of Finland in St. Petersburg have increased at a pace faster than anticipated. At the same time, inadequate facilities and difficulties in recruiting the staff needed have meant delays in processing applications. The current Petrozavodsk office is also strongly suspected of having mould, which hinders normal operations. For these reasons, application processing has drawn out to several weeks.

To ensure application processing, special arrangements are being introduced at the Petrozavodsk office. The Ministry for Foreign Affairs is setting up a temporary visa application processing centre in Onttola. The processing centre is situated in the premises of the North Karelia Border Guard District, located in Joensuu.

Personnel from the Petrozavodsk office supervise and monitor the processing centre’s activities. The intention is to hire about 20 fixed-term staff members for the centre.

The estimated date for the beginning of activities at the processing centre is 18 June. Initially, the centre will be in operation for six months; its period of operation can be extended if necessary.

Visa processing delays are detrimental to the travel industry. Those waiting for visa applications to be processed also include garden and other seasonal workers for whom the delay can have considerable multiplier effects. The aim of the special arrangements is to eliminate the backlog of visa applications submitted to the Petrozavodsk office, in order to avert these problems. Processing times will return to normal once the backlog has been eliminated. The processing centre will also ease the pressure caused by applications at the Consulate General of Finland in St. Petersburg.

The Petrozavodsk office will handle the reception of visa applications, rush applications and the handing over of passports after processing. The processing centre in Onttola operating under the Petrozavodsk office will process the applications, make decisions and print the visa stickers.

The Russian Federation and the Schengen countries have been notified of the establishment of the temporary processing centre in Onttola and the related special arrangements.

Additional information: Hilkka Nenonen, Head of the Passport and Visa Unit, tel. +358 9 1605 5211, Mikko Hautala, Adviser to the Minister for Foreign Affairs, tel. +358 9 1605 5332