RG’s officers fleece travellers

While the issuance of passports has improved since the formation of the national unity government and the countrys shift from the Zimbabwe dollar to the US dollar and the South African Rand, there are still long queues at the passport office here.

To cash in on the desperation, officers are demanding bribes from those passport seekers not willing to queue for long hours and those seeking urgent passports, which take three weeks to process.

To avoid queuing, one is required to pay a US200 bribe to the officers, who will then arrange that they get number tags, which are mandatory for passport seekers before they can be served.

To apply for a passport that takes three weeks to process, one is ordered to pay a bribe of $US300, in addition to the US$250 that is required to apply for the urgent document, meaning that people cough up more than US$500 for the same document.

There is nothing we can do but pay because failure to do that means coming here everyday, said a passport seeker. Even if you try and report them to the police, nothing happens because they have enough money to bribe the police officers and the whole thing has since become a vicious circle.

Passport seekers also accused the Registrar Generals officers of taking their time when handling passport applications, or coming up with outrageous demands for those seeking Emergency Travel Documents (ETDs), so that they create desperation within the applicants, thereby opening avenues for bribes.

The public is making it very difficult for us to end this scourge because, instead of reporting the culprits, they co-operate with them at the expense of the law. We do not condone such behaviour and many officers have been fired for taking bribes, said a senior official early this week.

However, most of the officers are said to have employed agents, who stand at the gate of the passport office, touting for customers on behalf of their bosses, so as to avoid easy detection.