BLACKLISTING LOOMS FOR FAILURE TO COLLECT DOCUMENTS

MBABANE – The Ministry of Home Affairs has announced plans to blacklist citizens who fail to collect their travel documents and identity (ID) documents from the ministry’s service centres.

The ministry’s Communications Officer, Mlandvo Dlamini, said the proposed blacklisting would prohibit those affected from applying for new travel documents or IDs in the future. He said the measure was necessary to reduce the growing backlog of uncollected documents, which he said was a huge loss to government. This comes after reports that over 400 travel documents and passports were lying idle, uncollected by applicants, at the ministry’s offices. It was established that some of the travel documents had not been collected by their owners since 2022. The ministry said the issue of uncollected travel documents was not unique to the headquarters, but all Home Affairs service centres were facing the same challenge.

According to Dlamini, since last week, the number of uncollected travel documents had increased to over 500. He said on top of the existing numbers at the headquarters, over 100 travel documents that were produced last week were still uncollected by owners. “We also have at least 100 international passports, which date back to January, which are still not collected,” Dlamini said. He explained that, Home Affairs Minister Princess Lindiwe, visited some of the service centres and found that they were also faced with the same challenge.

mopping

“In Manzini, we found several uncollected travel documents, some dating back to 2012. This does not only affect travel documents but also IDs. We still have IDs that were registered during the mopping exercise last year and they haven’t been collected by owners,” he said. According to Dlamini, the ministry was on a move to curb these acts, whereby citizens did not collect their documents at their service centres. He explained that people would be blacklisted once they reach a certain allocated period without collecting their documents. Dlamini mentioned that they were cognisant of the fact that innocent people would be affected, those who may be facing unfortunate situations, that prevent them from collecting their documents.
However, he said stringent rules needed to be implemented, because government was losing a lot of money producing these documents, which were then unclaimed by their owners.

“We don’t want to reach a stage where these stringent laws are implemented, but if this continues, government will have no choice but to introduce these laws,” Dlamini said. When he was asked about how much government was losing on producing these documents, which then lied idle at the ministry’s service centres, Dlamini said it was difficult to quantify the actual amount, but clarified that travel documents and any other documents produced by the ministry were highly subsidised. He stated that government was spending a lot of money to purchase these documents. Dlamini encouraged people to collect their documents whenever they had applied, to avoid finding themselves being blacklisted.

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