News / National
Zimbabwe to manufacture its own passport paper
16 Jul 2014 at 13:05hrs | Views
Government has mandated the ministry of Home Affairs to manufacture its own passport paper to cut back on costs of acquiring the travel document, permanent secretary Melusi Matshiya has said.
Currently, the least cost of obtaining a passport is pegged at $51, while it costs more if one wants the travel document quicker.
Matshiya said the cost of passports has been pushed up by the importation of passport paper from Bazark, a Russian company. The imported paper is then used to make passports on newly acquired state-of -the-art machinery.
"Cabinet has mandated us to produce our own passport paper and benchmark the price with other regional countries and we have made huge strides towards it.
…But on the part of paper, we still need to gain the appropriate altitude, so that we can cruise."
Matshiya said the ministry has looked at the costs of producing a passport on own paper and had identified a number of areas that needed to be addressed, one of which was the issue of material.
"What we had to do was to examine our capabilities. We realised we can't produce the high security feature paper which is manufactured in Germany, Russia and India.
"Our passport paper is just as good as money which is printed. This means that there is a lot investment which needs to be done, a reason why there are few players that manufacture passports in the world," he said.
The other motivation "is that we needed to comply with international regulations on passports so that our passports conform to regulations," he added.
Matshiya said his ministry had greatly improved on service delivery, while it is exploring other options to lower the costs of attaining passports.
"We are exploring e-passports. We are now producing at least 2 000 - 4000 passport booklets per day.
"Previously we were struggling. We purchased more state of the art printers. We have come up with a data highway whereby applications can be made in provinces and the data can be captured in the system," he said.
Mathsiya also said the passport office now had a satellite system owned by the ministry.
"That is why we are saying very soon we will be having e-passport capabilities as a ministry. We are now keeping in tandem with other nations," he said.
Currently, the least cost of obtaining a passport is pegged at $51, while it costs more if one wants the travel document quicker.
Matshiya said the cost of passports has been pushed up by the importation of passport paper from Bazark, a Russian company. The imported paper is then used to make passports on newly acquired state-of -the-art machinery.
"Cabinet has mandated us to produce our own passport paper and benchmark the price with other regional countries and we have made huge strides towards it.
…But on the part of paper, we still need to gain the appropriate altitude, so that we can cruise."
Matshiya said the ministry has looked at the costs of producing a passport on own paper and had identified a number of areas that needed to be addressed, one of which was the issue of material.
"What we had to do was to examine our capabilities. We realised we can't produce the high security feature paper which is manufactured in Germany, Russia and India.
"Our passport paper is just as good as money which is printed. This means that there is a lot investment which needs to be done, a reason why there are few players that manufacture passports in the world," he said.
The other motivation "is that we needed to comply with international regulations on passports so that our passports conform to regulations," he added.
Matshiya said his ministry had greatly improved on service delivery, while it is exploring other options to lower the costs of attaining passports.
"We are exploring e-passports. We are now producing at least 2 000 - 4000 passport booklets per day.
"Previously we were struggling. We purchased more state of the art printers. We have come up with a data highway whereby applications can be made in provinces and the data can be captured in the system," he said.
Mathsiya also said the passport office now had a satellite system owned by the ministry.
"That is why we are saying very soon we will be having e-passport capabilities as a ministry. We are now keeping in tandem with other nations," he said.
Source - Zim Mail
