Passport Office should up its game on communicating with applicants
Dear Editor, THE Passport Office is the government institution mandated to issue passports and other travel documents to the applicants. One of the qualifications for applying for a passport is that the applicant must be a Zambian citizen who has attained the age of 18.
After the formalities for applying for the passport are done, one is made to wait for the document to be processed and ultimately issued to the applicant. The unfortunate part is that the Passport Office does not communicate with the applicants when the latter’s passport is out despite the former having the contact details such as the mobile phone numbers and the email addresses. This is not right because the applicant might not know whether the passport is out or not.
A case in point is of one gentleman who applied for the passport last year in October. He is only collected the document this year in April. This is just one of the incidents of lack of communication between the clients and the Passport Office.
The problem of lack of communication of the Passport Office with the clients has compounded the delay in issuing of the passports to the applicants. I suggest that the Passport Office should up its game by introducing the toll free line on which the applicants can make follow ups on the latter’s applications for the passports. It is true to mention here that most government institutions have the toll free lines through which people can channel their concerns. On the other hand, the Passport Office should notify the applicants when the passports are out. This can be done through text messages and emails.It is cumbersome for a person to wait for the passport for a long time. If the trend of lack of communication by the Passport Office with the clients does not change, people will start suspecting corruption at the Passport Office. In conclusion, the Passport Office should improve on its services by coming up with a mechanism where the institution can contact the clients when the passport is out. This is the right thing to do.