Pretoria - As the 31 December deadline looms for Zimbabweans to tender their application forms to regularise their stay in South Africa, thousands are still without their home country passports.
"Zimbabweans cannot produce passports at the rate that will allow everyone who has applied to have it before the end of December this year. They are only able to produce 500 passports per day. As we speak, close to 40 000 applications remain," said Home Affairs Minister Nkosazana Dlamini Zuma.
She was speaking at a briefing in Pretoria after meeting with the Zimbabwean Stakeholder Forum on Wednesday.
Dlamini Zuma highlighted some of the major problems that posed a challenge in the processing of applications from Zimbabweans.
In addition to the slow pace of passport production, she said fingerprinting, verification of records and in some instances, people not having their records in South Africa to enable them to apply for Zimbabwean passports, were some of the obstacles.
The minister suggested that Zimbabwe extends its working hours to allow for more passports to be processed. At the moment, Zimbabwean offices operate only five days per week and close at 1pm.
She also encouraged people to come forward with their applications, despite the challenges.
"Their forms must be in, even if not accompanied by fingerprints because this process is taking time. From tomorrow onwards, we will be accepting all the forms that come in, even if they are not accompanied by fingerprints.
"No one will be turned back with a correctly completed form. These will be collected and the applicants will be called in to have their fingerprints taken," said Dlamini Zuma.
She emphasised that no new applications would be accepted after 31 December, even though the processing of forms would not stop then.
"We will not begin with the deportations until we have processed all the applications we have and those who are awaiting passports for which they have already applied."
She appealed to police to help the department handle large volumes of people in the build up to 31 December.
