The Registrar General’s office has said that it is now overwhelmed by the daily demand of passports.
Speaking during a Thursday tour of the passport production centre, Josiah Magama Tongogara Barracks by the Parliamentary Portfolio Committee on Home Affairs, Registrar General Clemence Masango said:
Backlog stands at 340 000 because every day we continue to receive more applications and the availability of support resources will determine how long the backlog will take to be cleared.
Our national demand for passports is far less than 8 000 passports per day; every day we receive new applications for passports, just plus or minus a thousand.
He also revealed that the country was only producing an average of 750 passports daily. Masango attributed inability to produce more passports to the scarcity of foreign currency which is needed to procure consumables.
Earlier, Home Affairs Minister, Cain Mathema had projected that the country would be producing about 3000 passports daily after the procurement of the new equipment.
The passport situationis dire to an extent that passport seekers are ready to pay huge kicks backs for their applications to be swiftly processed.
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