Zimbabwe passport farce

EDITOR - I went home to Zimbabwe to get a new passport. I thought I could get it in my home city only to be told that as someone living outside the country, I had to go to Harare. Why centralising services? God knows. I applied for a three-day passport which took five days to arrive.

The ladies who work at Makombe building have become so sophisticated that they work in teams to maximise the corruption. Mess with one and her gang will sort you out. The money from bribes is divided out between them at the end of the day.

My forms were rejected. Instead of giving me back the rejected forms I was told to go back home and come back tomorrow. Why? No-one knows. When I came back the following day I was ignored. Miserably, quietly and persuasively I went to see the supervisor in 8b who sent me back to wait at window six for the whole working day. I was then told to come back tomorrow. All they were waiting for was for me to grease their palms.

If passport forms are rejected why shouldn't they be given back immediately and the fault explained? When the supervisor notes a problem she writes it on the forms and they are rejected or returned to room 9. All this delay is meant to make people suffer so they dig deeper in their pockets.

What surprised me the most was that there was no proper office to launch complaints at Makombe. The very senior people that you try to talk to about your problems are the chiefs of the corruption syndicate.

Please create a round robin basis to stimulate motivation and productivity. One person should not have more than four hours on one task - it reduces the output.

Line managers should be multifaceted so as to give back up when lines are too long. What is the rationale of making a line manager that can't do the job. It's high time we revise our promotion system.

How can I sue for time wasted after I had to cancel my plane ticket three times, slept in a car twice and drove from Gweru to Harare four times after applying for a three-day express passport that took more than seven days?

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