President Robert Mugabe’s administration has blocked MPs on their motion to obtain diplomatic passports.
The MPs two years ago launched a special request to obtain the privileged documents citing that this would help them perform their duties more efficiently.
But the MPs are not government officers and so they have overstretched their expecations, government announced yesterday.
Cabinet minister for Foreign Affairs, Simbarashe Mumbengegwi said the passport is too high for legislators.
Mumbengegwi said this while responding to inquiries from legislators as he gave oral evidence on the country’s foreign policy before the Parliamentary Portfolio Committee on Foreign Affairs chaired by Makonde MP Kindness Paradza (Zanu-PF).
Warren Park MP Mr Elias Mudzuri (MDC-T) had asked why MPs were not issued with diplomatic passports to facilitate their work, adding that in some countries like South Africa, legislators enjoyed that privilege.
Mr Mudzuri also wanted to know why some people who had ceased to be diplomats continued to use such passports.
“The issuance of diplomatic passports is governed by Presidential directive. The President’s Office clearly spells out which categories should have diplomatic passports and parliamentarians are not on the list. A diplomatic passport is regarded as a document of the Executive to facilitate the executive in doing its work,” said Minister Mumbengegwi.
Asked to explain what kind of people were on the list, Minister Mumbengegwi said: “I do not have the list but what I know is that parliamentarians are not on the list because this is not the first time this issue has been raised, that some countries give diplomatic passports to their MPs and so on. That is what other countries do (but not Zimbabwe), what I know definitely is that parliamentarians are not in that category.”

He said there were people who were no longer diplomats but who were used by the Executive to carry out several diplomatic assignments hence the decision to allow them to continue using such documents.
“The Executive regards them as part of their pool of diplomatic personnel whom they can use in carrying out its work, like to be special envoys and so on. That is where you see someone who once qualified directly still holding diplomatic passports. It is because he is used from time to time to assist the Executive,” said Minister Mumbengegwi.