The Minister of Home Affairs, Kazembe Kazembe has dismissed as fake reports which suggest that passport charges have been increased.
Speaking to the Herald, Kazembe said that despite the unsustainability of charges which are currently being paid, the government has not reviewed them as suggested in the media. He said:
The local prices have not changed. We are not trying to make profits out of it. Passports are documents that our citizens are supposed to have. So, Government will still subsidise them, but we are simply saying the fees that people are paying right now are not sustainable but they (charges) have not gone up as yet. No!
The purported fake messages suggested that locals were now being required to pay $530 for an ordinary passport, $3 180 for an urgent passport and $2 000 for a passport issued in three weeks.
Zimbabwe has a huge passport backlog which dates back to 2018 as the Registrar General’s office has insufficient consumables needed for printing the travelling document.
More: The Herald