Zimbabwe Consulate treating Zimbabweans with disdain

It takes seven working days for one to get an Identity paper, a process that takes less than 10 minutes in Zimbabwe. Applicants spend a day queuing for verification before being issued with a bank-slip to pay the R150 charged when applying an Identity. Other two days are again spent lining to submit a copy of a bank statement, needed to prove that the correct amount has been deposited in the Consulate Standard bank account. After submitting the bank slips, applicants are then advised to come for the actual issuing of the ID after five working days. After the five days applicants have to congregate outside waiting for their names to be called out. In several instances applicants names are never called on the scheduled dates compelling them to visit the Consulate everyday hoping to be given services. Some applicants have lost their jobs as employers ran out of patience with the Zimbabwean employees who are forever at the Consulate to sort out their papers.

The same process applies when applying for a passport. The only difference here is that a passport sets back applicants by R750. It takes six weeks for the passports to be processed. Since the process started on 20 September 2010, all applicants are yet to receive their passports.

We are really worried that people are expected to queue for the whole day, just to submit a bank slip. The efficiency of the skeleton staff members manning the Consulate is further crippled by lack of machinery to process IDs. There is only one camera to shoot ID pictures. There are only two staff members processing birth certificates and IDs. One would have expected the Consulate to beef up their skeletal staff members to match the high volumes of applicants. Considering the millions of Rands being wrecked in by the Consulate, employing 10 more people should honestly be a priority so as to avoid unnecessary queuing. I sincerely believe that if there were more people offering services, the huge number of sky blue-shirted security guards, controlling queues with an iron fist will not be necessary. There are more security guards than service providers. The consulate is still to move in to other places like Durban, Port Elizabeth and Limpopo to assist Zimbabweans who desperately need the documents. The 31 December 2010 deadline will remain a pipe dream as long as incapacity continues to bedevil operations at the Zimbabwe consulate.

Bank-slips with the Consulates account numbers are also being sold to applicants for R800 on the back market. Desperate applicants were left without any option except to buy the goods as the Consulate created artificial shortages of bank-slips. How on earth can a consulate run out of bank-slips? Who created the shortages?