Passport seekers spending nights at Immigration

It’s 11.46pm in Lilongwe. Outside the Department of  Immigration and Citizenship offices Martha Phiri, 43, pulls a tiny silky bed sheet around her head to ward off the midnight chill as she lay on a sack in a cluster of fellow sleeping women.

Warning! This is not a funeral vigil, but a price others have to pay to process a passport. In case of Phiri, she is spending her sixth night on a concrete drainage having arrived from Ntcheu last Friday.

Phiri has neither had her fingerprints nor photographs taken. She faces a long fight.

 “I’ m hungry, but I don’t have money. I had my last meal yesterday,” she says while quivering. “We are in the cold season and it’s biting cold.”

Nearer her improvised nest, some people are sleeping on coarse chairs planted on the waiting shelter and others on flattened cartons that double as makeshift mattresses.

They have come from far and cannot afford to commute daily or stay at a lodge, most said.

Others, however, want to protect their positions in the queue.

“I was in position three. If I leave and return tomorrow, I may find myself some distance away,” said one applicant, identifying himself as Marko.

A majority do not have beddings; a few have clipped down their caps to protect their faces against the cold and illumination from the sight-torturing security lights.

Another applicant Leonard Zanda, arrived three weeks ago from South Africa where he works. His quest to renew his passport has not yielded anything despite paying for an express one.

 “I come from Machinga. I used to sleep at a lodge but I have run out of funds now. This is my first time sleeping here. But already, I feel tormented,” he said while fearing he may lose his job if he overstays.

What is noticeably absent are sanitation facilities. A Nation on Sunday crew on that Wednesday night saw some applicants, one by one, disappearing into the dense darkness.

“Since there are no toilets around as the private one, we pay for during the day, we just relieve ourselves in the nearby bushes,” she said, confessing that she has not taken a bath for three days.

Meanwhile, the Parliamentary Defence and Security chairperson Salim Bagus has described the agony as worrisome while blaming it on lack of passport printing services in other regions.

 “The reduction of passport fees (from K90 000 to K50 000) has attracted so many applicants which is good to make it affordable. Demand and supply are not matching because of limited production of passports.

“The machines or the system being used now is for temporary measure as you may appreciate that it was a complete shutdown,” he said.

Meanwhile, he has urged the government to acquire a permanent system of printing passports “which will allow the regions to print passports. Government should increase human capacity to clear the backlog,” he said.

The agony of passport hunting is the same at the Blantyre Immigration Department and Citizenship Services’ headquarters where government last week announced that it has resumed printing of passports.

Dejectedly looking Maryam Makina, travelled all the way from Mulanje to Blantyre to follow-up on her passport application made in January this year.

She was confident of getting assistance following the department’s announcement two weeks ago that it had embarked on a full-scale clearing of outstanding passport applications.

In particular, the department said it would start clearing a backlog of passport applications from January this year.

But Makina felt betrayed on Tuesday  when officers at the Blantyre immigration office told her that they were yet to start clearing the backlog.

Dressed in a blue blouse, black dress and plastic shoes, Makina, who has arrived at 7am,  seemed angry when she was told about the hopeless situation eight hours later.

“I started off around 5am hoping to get assistance really quick. I have been waiting only to be told that I cannot be assisted around 3pm?” she wondered.

On the day, Makina was with a friend who had come to Blantyre to buy stock for her grocery shop.

Makina said she was hoping to collect her passport to travel to South Africa to seek greener pastures.

 “It means for six months I have been waiting for the passport. I saved for a long time for the passport, paid for it, and now I am made to wait until God-knows-when,” she said.

The single mother of one said every time she goes to check for her passport, she is given assurances which never materialise.

Ministry of Homeland Security Principal Secretary Steven Kayuni and Immigration national spokesperson Wellington Chiponde did not respond to our inquiry pertaining to what the ministry is doing to resolve issues at the department.

During the meeting, Kayuni said the department’s technocrats are better placed to provide solutions to the challenges affecting service delivery.

A system breakdown earlier this year resulted in suspension of passport printing. President Lazarus Chakwera blamed the crash on cybercrime. The system was restored but it was only in Lilongwe where passports were being printed before resuming in Blantyre as well.