Home Affairs Minister Cain Mathema said that the Registrar-General’s office is set to produce 100 000 passports by December this year following the delivery of paper and other consumables.

Addressing reporters at Mukwati Building in Harare on Monday, Mathema also revealed that measures are being put in place to allow Zimbabweans living abroad to acquire passports, birth certificates and national identity documents from where they are living.

He said:

While the impact of the measures taken so far is considerable in that about 100 000 people who applied for passports will take delivery of such documents by the end of December 2019, with the arrival of the additional material on order at the end of November 2019 or early December 2019, we expect to double the number of people getting passports within two months of taking delivery.

The current passport backlog stands at over 300 000 copies as desperate Zimbabweans seek to escape from the economic meltdown.