Zimbabwe has run out of passports and number plates for vehicle registration, forcing people to wait lengthy periods to get them, fueling another sign of a hopeless shortage of US dollars in the Southern African country.
Hundreds of people gathered in the morning winter cold at the Harare passport office on Wednesday after arriving as soon as 5 a.m. to the passport queue.
They were told to check their documents in 2022.
This is because it is necessary to import a unique paper and ink used to create passports, but there is a shortage of foreign currency in the country.
One of those queuing, Bothwell Mhashu, said he wished to escape home financial problems and join his elder brother in Namibia.
In June 2018, he applied for a passport and he was supposed to get the document after three months.
“They just told me that my passport is not ready; I have to check again in August.
“This is not fair,’’ a despondent Mhashu said as he left the passport office.
Clemence Masango, the Registrar General, declined to comment when Reuters contacted him on Wednesday.
In addition, Transport Minister Joel Matiza said he was unable to comment on the shortages at the moment.
Under President Emmerson Mnangagwa, who took over from Robert Mugabe after a coup in 2017, a hoped-for financial turnaround is yet to materialize.
Instead, Zimbabweans suffer from U.S. dollar shortages, fuel, bread, and 15-hour power cuts.
The government re-named its interim currency, the RTGS dollar, the dollar of Zimbabwe last week, making it the sole legal tender of the country.
That finished a decade of dollarization and took another step towards a full-fledged currency re-launch.
Zimbabweans slept at the passport office in 2008 to be the first to apply as a result of economic crisis under Mugabe as hyperinflation destroyed the currency of the country.
An ordinary passport costs 53 dollars ($6.32), while a 24-hour emergency document requires ZW$318.
Except for a few senior officials, no emergency passports are issued.
But representatives at the office of the registrar general said plans were being made to print passports locally on central bank-owned Fidelity Printers and Refiners to clear a backlog of over 50,000 requests.
That’s if they can import the necessary equipment.
At the center of Harare’s car registry, authorities informed motorists they were not sure when number plates would be ready because the department was still waiting for central bank foreign currency to pay a German provider.
“We don’t know when we will have number plates, maybe in September,’’ said a registry official who declined to be named.
Soaring inflation and shortages are reminding Zimbabweans of Mugabe’s dark days, but the government of Mnangagwa says this is the reform pain that will eventually revive the economy. (Reuters/NAN)
