Over 80 touts arrested at RG’s office

the Registrar General’s Office in Harare.
The touts were arrested between last Friday and yesterday.

Some of the touts are forming syndicates to dupe people of their money for passports and other services that fall under the jurisdiction of the RG’s Office. The RG Mr Tobaiwa Mudede yesterday confirmed the arrests saying some of the touts were making between US$600 and US$1 000 a day.
“Police, with the assistance of our security personnel have arrested 83 touts with 13 of them being caught today (yesterday),” he said.

“They are taking away money and forms from people claiming they would help them in facilitating the applications but at the end of the day our clients end up with nothing.”
He said this was despite the fact that some people would have travelled long distances to secure the important documents.
Mr Mudede said some of the con men were posing as officers from the RG’s department.

“There are also cases when they use the names of our officers and clients would only discover they would have been duped after confronting the officers,” he said.
“The touts are the same people causing problems wherever there is a queue be it at immigration posts and ranks.”
An ordinary Zimbabwean passport costs US$50 while a three-day passport costs US$253. Mr Mudede called for stiffer penalties for people caught on the wrong side of the law.

“The problem is that after being caught some of them are fined and knowing how big they earn from extorting, they would be back at the passport offices the following day,” he said.
“It is only after the imposition of stiffer penalties that the rot will be reduced. A jail sentence would be ideal because some people would have spent nights queuing to get the documents.”
He said the passport office had made “tremendous” progress in clearing the backlog of passport applications and a lot of passports were lying uncollected.

“We are managing in terms of passport production though the situation is being compromised by those being deported from other countries especially South Africa,” he said.
“We urge people to come and collect their passports because the number of uncollected passports is big. We have three weeks since we started opening on Saturday to allow people to collect their passports.”

At least 6 502 people have been deported from South Africa to Zimbabwe in the last few months.
Meanwhile, Mr Mudede said names of deceased persons on the voter’s roll could only be removed if his office is notified of the death and registers it.

He said some people died in villages where village heads issue burial orders and they are buried without a death certificate.
“We started this a year ago. It’s difficult worldwide but we are working with traditional leaders, headmen and relatives of the deceased,” he said.
“The relatives have to undertake that the person died and the RG’s Office will cross check the information with the traditional leaders.”
Mr Mudede is on record as saying the voters’ roll was clean and his office was ready to accept anyone wishing to inspect it.