COMMENT: Acquiring IDs must not be a nightmare

For a long time, getting vehicle registration numbers in Harare was an impossible task for car owners due to corruption at the Central Vehicle Registry (CVR).

One had to bribe the officials to have their vehicle registered. Those who didn’t like to offer bribes or who didn’t have the money to do so, just drove around in their unmarked vehicles.

However, at the beginning of the year police launched a blitz against unregistered cars. Caught between a rock and a hard place, motorists appealed to the Government to crack corruption and a poor work ethic at the CVR.

Transport and Infrastructural Development Minister Felix Mhona personally visited the CVR to read the riot act to the officials.

He admonished them for creating a crisis by telling their clients that there were no number plates yet thousands of them were piled at that office. He also ordered decentralisation of allocation of vehicle number plates to border posts, enabling people importing vehicles to immediately buy permanent registration plates instead of temporary ones.

With those actions and more, the corruption at CVR was extinguished.

In April last year, Home Affairs and Cultural Heritage Minister, Kazembe Kazembe experienced the corruption that happened at the Civil Registry office in the capital. Posing as an ordinary passport seeker, he queued like everyone else, but was later joined by a tout who offered to assist him jump the queue for US$30. The minister played along.

Avito Newton, the tout, got the shock of his life when the Minister effected a citizen’s arrest on him. It had become the norm for applicants to sleep for days on queues hoping to be the first to be assisted.

Reports at the time indicated that the corruption didn’t end with the touting on the queues; it extended into offices where officials demanded bribes to process passport applications faster.

After the Minister’s action, the ministry came up with sweeping measures that cleaned the passport office of touts as well as the general corruption associated with that office in Harare.

Bulawayo residents, also in trouble with touts and Civil Registry officials they work with, are crying for assistance. We reported yesterday that residents and other citizens, some from Nkayi and Tsholotsho, are sleeping on queues at the office in efforts to be among the first to be served the next morning.

However, they return home, rather to the places they were the night before, disappointed as touts and officials demand bribes for that to happen.

Miss Audrey Tshabalala, an Ordinary Level pupil at a local school told us: “This is the most terrifying moment of life coming here for the past two days and getting all sorts of excuses. What is most disheartening is that whenever you try to wake up early, someone who comes later goes first simply because they would have bribed the security guard and other officers.”

Mr Langelihle Dliwayo, also in a queue at the same office, said:

“We have actually seen some officials demanding bribes of between US$10 and US$20 from desperate document seekers in return for preferential treatment. In fact, my neighbour recently got his ID after bribing an official to facilitate for the quick movement of their papers.”

Applying for a passport, ID or birth certificate must not be a “terrifying” experience as Miss Tshabalala put it. It must be a smooth process.

Readers will most likely know the happy experience one gets after one gets their first ID as that marks, in black and white, their graduation into adulthood. They will most likely know the excitement one experiences after acquiring a passport.

Touts and corrupt officials at the civil registry in the city must not make that office a “terrifying” one. Our people must experience the excitement that comes with acquiring their first ID, their passport or birth certificate.

An ID, passport and birth certificate can open big opportunities for those holding them, but a lack of one can mean no job, no right to vote or no identity.

The progress of law abiding citizens must not be determined by the sleazy characters at eMsitheli. No.

We therefore look forward to law enforcement agencies and the Civil Registry Department itself stepping in immediately to rid the Bulawayo office of the criminals prowling at its gates and inside. They have no business there.

Steps similar to those taken at the CVR and passport office in Harare can be taken at the local office. And that solution must be sustained so that the criminals don’t return.