SOUTH Africa’s Home Affairs Department is sitting on 3 000
Zimbabwe Exemption Permits (ZEP) which have not been collected for the past
nine months and has enlisted the services of the Zimbabwe Consulate in that
country to help by notifying those who applied.
Pretoria introduced a four-year permit known as the
Zimbabwe Exemption Permit (ZEP) for those wishing to study or work in that
country in January 2018. The permits are valid between January 1, 2018 and
December 31, 2021 and replaced the Zimbabwe Special Permit (ZSP) which expired in December 2017.
A total of 197 941 holders of the ZSP permit were eligible
to apply for the ZEP when the programme started but only 169 000 managed to
apply via the Visa Facilitation Services.
Zimbabwe’s Ambassador to South Africa, Mr David
Hamadziripi, confirmed the development yesterday. “We have received
communication from our hosts that they have 3 000 permits processed under the
ZEP which have been uncollected for the past nine months.
“Reasons vary from the fact that other people have left
South Africa or others have expired passports. However, through the assistance
of our Registrar General we managed to facilitate to expedite issuance of
passports for those who had pending applications at the VFS,” he said.
Mr Hamadziripi said the ZEP programme was ongoing and
appealed to those who haven’t collected completed permits to do so before the
end of this month. He said it was important for all those who were yet to get
feedback on the status of their applications to approach the VFS.
“On the other hand our officers are working on modalities
to notify those that we can reach.
“You will realise that when DHA opened the application
processes there are those who qualified for the ZEP but had challenges of
expiring permits. We then helped these to get new documents,” said Mr
Hamadziripi.
“Currently DHA has come back again to seek assistance in
reaching out to those with completed but did not collect permits. It is our
hope that our compatriots will respond positively.”
The Chronicle understands that those who fail to collect
the special permits from VFS risk losing out since they will be destroyed by
the DHA in line with their statutes. Chronicle
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