By A Correspondent- REGISTRAR-General Mr Clemence Masango has issued a stern warning to officials in his department who are capitalising on the challenges in the issuance of passports by demanding kickbacks from desperate citizens intending to acquire emergency travel documents. 

Desperate Zimbabweans are parting with huge sums of money to pay bribes in order to obtain passports as the Registrar General’s office is battling an acute shortage of special paper and ink used to make passports, resulting in a huge backlog for travel documents. 

In an interview, Mr Masango said Government officials should desist from taking advantage of the people’s desperate situation through taking bribes. 

“Government policy as pronounced by His Excellency President Emmerson Mnangagwa including our Minister of Home Affairs and Cultural Heritage (Cde Cain Mathema) reiterates the same point, which is zero tolerance to corruption. We therefore appeal to everyone, our clients, citizens and officials to desist from corruption,” he said.

Mr Masango said those caught engaging in corrupt activities would face the full wrath of the law.

“Corruption is a punishable offence and the cases that we will be able to detect will be dealt with by law enforcement agents and consequences will follow. Our position as a department is that when it comes to corruption there is no excuse and officials caught accepting bribes from clients will face the full wrath of the law,” he said.

“As civil servants we are already paid for the job that we are doing and there is no reason to extort or solicit for bribes. They (civil servants) are supposed to be content with the remuneration they are getting from the Government, if they feel the money is too little they should find elsewhere to go.”-StateMedia