Staff Reporter

Mobile civil registration exercise meant to issue more than two million civil documents will commence today across the country.

The exercise which was initiated by the Government will coincide with census and voter registration exercise.

In a statement yesterday, Home Affairs and Cultural Heritage Minister Kazembe Kazembe said that quite a number of Zimbabweans had no primary documents and the Government decided to roll out the mobile registration exercise to alleviate the situation.

“All is set for the nationwide mobile registration exercise which we are rolling tomorrow (today) through the Civil Registry Department to ensure that all our citizens acquire national documents. We have quite a number of people without these vital documents which is why as Government we decided to intervene through this blitz,” said Minister Kazembe.

Minister Kazembe added that the backlog for the civil documents is sitting at approximately one million, but the Government is targeting to issue the documents to nearly two million people.

“We had our backlog sitting at around one million, but we know probably there are some people who have not even attempted to apply for these documents largely because of queues. This is a mobile exercise, which means we are going to where the people are and we have deployed teams in various stations across the country so that we issue birth certificates and national identity documents to our people.

“We are targeting at least two million, more than double the number that we know,” said Minister Kazembe.

Minister Kazembe added that the requirements were relaxed in order for people to smoothly acquire the documents. He added that by 30 September 2022, every citizen in the country should have acquired their national documents.

According to the Minister, the Civil Registry Department will embark on an awareness campaign notifying people about the requirements and the mobile registration centres.

The mobile registration exercise will benefit thousands of Zimbabweans who were finding it difficult to acquire primary documents due to various reasons amongst them long queues and or long distance to the Civil Registry Offices.