THE crisis at the passport offices is far from over, with
Registrar-General Clemence Masango failing to give an estimate timeframe of
when the processing of travelling documents will resume following suspension of
the services during the week, allegedly due to technical glitches.
Speaking to the NewsDay Weekender yesterday, Masango was at
pains to give details on when operations would resume.
“We issued a public statement two days ago indicating that
we were facing a system failure, which is being attended to right now,” he
said.
The notice read in part: “The Registrar-General’s
Department wishes to inform its valued clients and the public in general, that
we are currently experiencing
system breakdown, which has affected passport processing
and production. Our engineers are, however, working flat out to rectify the
problem.”
However, Masango could not be drawn to give further details
about the problem or when it would be resolved.
“How can I have knowledge of such?” he said. This is
despite the fact that thousands of people have been left stranded, with some
bound to miss important events.
Lately, people were sleeping in the queues since only a few
people were being served per day. The passports office has been dogged by a
host of challenges, including shortage of passport paper.
This forced them to downsize their operations, creating a
huge backlog.
Early this year, the Registrar-General admitted in
Parliament that the demand for emergency passports had increased, thereby
putting pressure on the dwindling passport paper. He also cited foreign
currency challenges.
At the time, he said they were only printing the $53
passport.
Another issue he raised was that of inadequate personnel.
Masango said instead of the 2 540 staff that they needed, they had less than 2
100 officers.
Meanwhile, the usual bustling at Makombe Building was
heavily subdued yesterday, with a few people, mostly vendors, milling around.
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