Thiruvananthapuram, November 12: The German Consulate will consider the possibility of organizing visa camps at frequent intervals in Thiruvananthapuram to process the German visa applications, Consul & Head of Visa Section, German Consulate General, Bangalore, said.
Mr Jonas Michael Turk said this while on a visit to Technopark today. Technopark CEO Col Sanjeev Nair (Retd) received Mr Jonas Michael Turk, who had an interactive session with executives of Technopark-based companies.
Dr. Syed Ibrahim, Honorary Consul of the Federal Republic of Germany for Kerala and Director of Goethe-Zentrum; Sreekumar V, Secretary of Group of Technology Companies (Gtech) and Centre Head at Tata Elxsi Trivandrum and Shri Vasanth Varada, Deputy Vice President (Marketing & Customer Relationship), also participated in the interactive session.
Representatives of Technopark based companies including UST Global, Quest Global, Allianz Services, Acsia, DSpace, Tata Elxsi, SunTec and others attended the session and sought the possibility of reopening German Visa Centre in Thiruvananthapuram which was closed down post Covid Pandemic.
Responding to the demand for a German Visa Facilitation Service Center in Thiruvananthapuram, Mr Turk said although German Consulate was aware of this demand right now he could not comment on the time frame by which the facility would be re-established. He, however, said a monthly or bi-monthly visa camp can be conducted to start with in Thiruvananthapuram where the applications from the region can be processed from here itself”.
“We are getting at least 250-300 German visa applications per month from Technopark companies and we have to use operational days by travelling to Kochi for the visa processing. So, there’s a rising demand for the need of a German VFS center in Thiruvananthapuram,” Shri Sreekumar said.
“Kerala and Germany have strong ties and there is a lot of business and cultural interest between the two regions,” Mr Jonas Michael Turk noted.
Col Sanjeev Nair welcomed the idea of holding visa camp at frequent intervals in the state capital and suggested that Technopark could host that.
“Thiruvananthapuram is a strategically important city with a surge in knowledge-based industries including companies focused in various tech domains like EV, Electronics & Semiconductors, Space Technology, Defence, AVGC, Cyber Security and emerging technologies like AI, IoT, Blockchain etc. And many of our companies have business ties in Germany, and I hope the consulate will consider our request for a VFS centre in Thiruvananthapuram soon,” said Col Sanjeev Nair (Retd.) .