The Secretary for Home Affairs and Cultural Heritage Melusi Matshiya says he has instructed the Registrar-General’s Office to set up a committee to vet passports applications to deal with corruption.
This follows reports that corrupt officials are demanding up to US$200.00 to process passports for desperate citizens. In an interview with The Herald, Matshiya said:
We want to eliminate corruption because where there is a scarcity, corruption can creep in. But when we have a committee, we can help each other and make an informed decision.
The Registrar-general’s office is currently producing 800 passports per day while the backlog is reported to be in the hundreds of thousands.
Failure to produce passports timeously has been blamed on the shortage of foreign currency to secure consumables like ribbons and ink.