The government of South Africa has given the government of Zimbabwe the go ahead to start issuing passports, birth certificates and national identity cards to Zimbabweans residing in South Africa reports The Herald.
The documents will be issued in selected points that ae yet to be identified by the South African authorities.
“Our South African counterparts are now in the process of identifying places where we can conduct this exercise (Issuance of the documents). When the locations have been submitted, we will immediately deploy our teams to the neighbouring country.” Said Deputy Minister of Home Affairs Cde Obedingwa Mguni
The exercise is to ensure that Zimbabweans living in the diaspora are in possession of all valuable valid documents. Mr. Mguni said that most their citizens have been using illegal points to access neighbouring countries, lacking birth certificates and National IDS. He further added that his ministry was also working on reducing the time involved in processing passports.
“Passports should be issued within 14 days and ours are issued after two months. These are some of the anomalies that we want to address. We need to introduce quick coordinated security checks that will expedite the process.” Said Mr. Mguni
Zimbabwe has acquired a highly efficient machine from Japan that processes passport but there is no capacity for the machine.
