REGISTRAR-General Mr Clemence Masango has issued a stern
warning to officials in his department who are capitalising on the challenges
in the issuance of passports by demanding kickbacks from desperate citizens
intending to acquire emergency travel documents.
Desperate Zimbabweans are parting with huge sums of money
to pay bribes in order to obtain passports as the Registrar General’s office is
battling an acute shortage of special paper and ink used to make passports,
resulting in a huge backlog for travel documents.
In an interview, Mr Masango said Government officials
should desist from taking advantage of the people’s desperate situation through
taking bribes.
“Government policy as pronounced by His Excellency
President Emmerson Mnangagwa including our Minister of Home Affairs and
Cultural Heritage (Cde Cain Mathema) reiterates the same point, which is zero
tolerance to corruption. We therefore appeal to everyone, our clients, citizens
and officials to desist from corruption,” he said.
Mr Masango said those caught engaging in corrupt activities
would face the full wrath of the law.
“Corruption is a punishable offence and the cases that we
will be able to detect will be dealt with by law enforcement agents and
consequences will follow. Our position as a department is that when it comes to
corruption there is no excuse and officials caught accepting bribes from
clients will face the full wrath of the law,” he said.
“As civil servants we are already paid for the job that we
are doing and there is no reason to extort or solicit for bribes. They (civil
servants) are supposed to be content with the remuneration they are getting
from the Government, if they feel the money is too little they should find
elsewhere to go.”
Mr Masango urged the nation to be patient, saying the
Government through Treasury has availed funds for the procurement of materials
required in the production of passports.
“We have a backlog of passports which stands at over 3 000
and the production of passports is depressed due to lack of consumables, which
are ink, ribbons and films. Payments have since been made by Treasury to
support the department to get the required material, which we expect to receive
within the next four weeks after which we will be able to revert to normal
production capacity of 3 000 passports per day. We urge our citizens to be
patient with us because as soon as we receive material we will see production
and issuance of passports and a statement to that effect will be made to update
our people,” he said.
Mr Masango said the department will be able to clear the
backlog within 100 working days once the first consignment of consumables
arrives.
At the moment the department is only printing 100 passports
a day due to a shortage of materials.
“Once we get the
materials required, arrangements will be made to dedicate part of the staff to
clear the backlog while some work on new applications. All things being equal
we have the capacity to clear the backlog within 100 working days,” Mr Masango
said.
He said the Government at the moment is incapacitated to
make a once-off purchase of the required material.
“However, the payment that has been made currently has
served as an unlocking mechanism of supply and deliveries will be ongoing,” Mr
Masango said.
Home Affairs and Cultural Heritage Minister Cain Mathema
has said Government was committed to meeting its obligations to ensure that the
public accesses travel documents with Treasury having bought new machines to
print the travel documents at a cost of nearly US$600 000. Chronicle
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