More Than 17,000 Passports Not Collected

By Baboki Kayawe
Staff Writer | Monday February 22, 2010 00:00

Speaking in an interview with the Monitor in which he appealed to people not apply for passports unless they needed them, the ministry's Assistant Communications Manager (Acting), Letso Mpho,

This is inspite of appeals to the applicants through at kgotla meetings, radio announcements and messages sent to the mobile phones (SMSs) notification, Mpho said people are reluctant to collect their passports.

Though he said it is difficult to monitor Batswana travelling patterns in that the old passport did not make it friendly to do so, the number of uncollected passports bears testimony that people apply for passports yet they do not need them.

'There is a misconception that a passports is a must have document, ' he said.

Speaking ahead of the issuance of the e-passport expected at the beginning of this March, with the president and his vice already been issued,

Mpho appealed to people whose passports have expired and they do not make international travels not apply for the e-passport. Rather, he said they should apply for Emergency Travel Documents when the need arises to avoid expenditure in documents that they do not use. 'A passport is a travel document and it is issued for that purpose only. It does not substitute a national identity card,' Mpho said.

The old passport will be phased out in December 2011.

The production cost for each booklet is about P800, with a subsidised application fee of P260. Unlike the old passport, it allows visual identification through the aid of biometric features and will have a lifespan of 10 years. However, for applicants who obtained it before the age of 16; the life span reduces to five.

Mpho said reasons are that the applicant is still growing and their features consistently change hence a need to match them with the information coded in the e-passport.

A German company Giesecke and Devrient (G&D) was awarded the P120 million tender in November 2008 at a time when Botswana has been warned by the UK and other European countries to improve its passport security features. Botswana's poor passport security features have resulted in easy forgeries by criminals.