THE Ministry of Home Affairs and Cultural Heritage says the
Registrar-General’s office will not renew expired passports that still have
blank pages as it was against the International Air Transport Association
(IATA) regulations.
This comes following concerns from the public over the
continued delays in the processing of passports in the country. The
Registrar-General’s office has reported that the passport backlog has now
surpassed 370 000.
Most people who are applying for new passports say they
have old passports with many blank pages, resulting in calls for the Government
to consider extending the lifespan of such documents.
However, Home Affairs and Cultural Heritage Minister
Ambassador Cain Mathema told Sunday News in an interview that the Government
will not consider extending the lifespan of expired passports.
“All passports in the world belong to IATA, no passport
belongs to any country, we work according to the rules and laws of that
organisation. So, if you have a passport that was not used and has expired, in
any case why would one have a passport that they are not using, you cannot use
it again. You apply for a new one,” he said.
Minister Mathema said Zimbabwe is part of the international
community and passports are part of the international community where rules are
standard.
“People who do not use their passports until they have
expired are simply showing us that they do not need the passports. You cannot
apply for a passport and not use it for years and it expires and you expect my
office to grant you the permission to use an expired passport because it still
has a lot of blank pages, it does not work. If a passport has expired that’s
it, it does not matter how many blank pages it has, it will not work and that
is the rule in countries all over the world. We cannot change the international
laws because we have a challenge in Zimbabwe of passports.”
He said the situation concerning access to passports was
not yet desperate and efforts were being made to ensure that people have travel
documents. Minister Mathema said people should be patient as Government has not
failed to issue passports but the process was being hindered by the shortage of
foreign currency to procure booklets and paper to print the documents.
He encouraged members of the public to continue applying
for passports despite the challenges which he said would be rectified as a
matter of time. He said it was a Constitutional right to access the vital
documents that enable people to travel outside the country. The
Registrar-Generals office says it is able to process 750 urgent passports per
day.
The country also stopped issuing Emergency Travel Documents
more than four years ago after most countries in the region turned them down.
Sunday News
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