HARARE – The Home Affairs ministry says it will print 100,000 passports by Christmas as it aims to clear a pile-up of applications, which was recently estimated to be in excess of 370,000.
Ordinary passport applications should take a few weeks, but Zimbabweans are waiting for more than two years in cases as the broke government struggles to secure the special ink and paper.
Home Affairs Minister Cain Mathema told reporters in Harare on Monday that they had imported huge stocks of passport material and would expedite the issuance of passports.
“Further steps have been taken to take delivery of passport paper and consumables as well as material for the production of synthetic identification cards to make sure that all those requiring our services get them in line with our client service charter,” Mathema said.
“While the impact of the measures taken so far are considerable in that about 100,000 people who applied for passports will take delivery of such documents by the end of December 2019, with the arrival of the additional material on order at the end of November 2019 or early December 2019, we expect to double the number of people getting passports within two months of taking delivery.”
Mathema said they recently installed three new printers to aid the process.
Zimbabweans at the main passport office in Harare have taken to sleeping in queues for any chance at being served the following day — and that’s just to submit an application.
Several million Zimbabweans already left for neighbouring South Africa and other countries during years of economic turmoil in the last decade.
