By Pemphero Malimba
The Department of Immigration and Citizenship Services says it will resume the provision of passport services to people in the Northern Region through its Mzuzu offices Monday.
The department’s national spokesperson Wellington Chiponde said Sunday that the services would include those that allow people to pay, submit passport applications and collect issued passports.
Chiponde said this complements their efforts to ensure that people from the region are not facing travel challenges when accessing the services.
“We want to operate fully by providing passport services in all the passport printing centres in the country,” he said.
He, however, said passport printing services would continue in Lilongwe alone.
“We are currently conducting various processes to ensure that we should also resume the provision of passport services in Mangochi,” he said.
Recently, Parliamentary Committee on Security and Defence Chairperson Salim Bagus said challenges faced in passport services can only be dealt with if procurement of more machines is done.
Bagus observed that printing about 1,000 passports a day was not enough to meet current demand.
“The government should make sure that they procure machines which were like those used by the former company that was contracted to be printing passports. If we have such type of machines, I am sure that everything will be solved at the Department of Immigration and Citizenship Services,” he said.
In February this year, the department suspended passport printing services following technical challenges.
The service resumed in March.
Since then, the department reported that it had printed at least 24,000 passports by June 30 2024.
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