Zimbabwe: The fees for ordinary passports increased from January 1, 2024. Now, the passports will be available from US $120 to US $150.
Whereas, the emergency passports will be available between US $200 to US $250 within two working days.
According to the Department of Civil Registry, the highest number of applications were recorded in December during the holiday period used by the Diasporians to get new documents.
Reportedly, this year, the reason for the high number of applicants is supposed to be due to the bid to beat the deadline.
As per the sources, over 45,000 people were issued passports from December 1, 2023 to December 29, 2023, but most of them were unable to meet the deadline due to the sudden increase in the cost of obtaining travel documents.
Since then, the official department has increased the working hours.
Notably, 92,313 Zimbabweans applied for e-passports from December 1 to29, in 2023.
Considering the same, the Civil Registry Department Registrar General – Henry Machiri said that long queues were usually caused by the imminent news fees, usually.
The new fee has become legally effective from Jan 01, and the old fee will no longer be applicable. As of which many people might also see queues during this time.
The Registrar General mentioned that normally, they get more people around the Christmas holidays. “Because we have citizens in the diaspora who use the holidays to get an opportunity to apply for new passports,” added Machiri.
RG Machiri also quoted that his department has enough raw materials to cater for every applicant despite the upsurge in applications.
He assured the citizens of the nation that despite of rise in the number of applications the officials of the department are receiving at present, they have enough resources to ensure the availability of the passports to the applicants on time.
“For the ordinary passport, it is a maximum of seven days and for the urgent passport, it is within 48 hours, i.e. two days,” said the Registrar General
Henry Machiri also confirmed that the old passports are still valid until they expire and will not be phased out soon. He mentioned that the machine-readable passports are still valid. “We understand that people have been spreading rumours that it will expire after two years, which is not true,” he added.
Machiri said that the electronic passport is not yet mandatory. “Yes, it is an advantage for Zimbabwe. We have to go on with the electronic passport but our citizens who are still using the machine-readable passport should know that the old passport will expire according to the validity date written in the passport,” informed the RG.
As per the sources, the Civil Registry Department extended working hours at passport offices from 7:00 a.m. to 7:00 p.m. during weekdays and 8:00 a.m. to 3:00 p.m. on Saturdays.
The Finance, Economic Development and Investment Promotion Minister, Professor – Mthuli Ncube, initially increased the fee for an ordinary passport to US $200 while presenting the National Budget 2024 in November. But later on, after a debate in the Parliament, the figure was revised to US $150.