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Zimbabwe runs out of passports, adding to long list of shortages

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Zimbabwe has run out of passports and vehicle registration number plates, forcing citizens to wait for long periods to get them – yet another sign of a desperate shortage of US dollars in the southern African nation.

A hoped-for economic turnaround under President Emmerson Mnangagwa, who took over from Robert Mugabe after a 2017 coup, is yet to materialise.

Instead, Zimbabweans are enduring shortages of US dollars, fuel, bread and 15-hour power cuts.

Last week, the government renamed its interim currency, the RTGS dollar, the Zimbabwe dollar and made it the country’s sole legal tender. That ended a decade of dollarization and took another step toward relaunching a fully-fledged currency.

At the passport office in Harare early on Wednesday, hundreds of people huddled in the morning winter cold after arriving as early as 5 a.m. (0300 GMT) to queue to apply for passports. They were told to check their documents in 2022.

That is because a special paper and ink used to make passports has to be imported but there is no foreign currency.

Bothwell Mhashu, one of those queuing, said he wanted to escape the economic troubles at home and join his elder brother in Namibia. He applied for a passport in June 2018 and was supposed to get his document after three months.

“They just told me that my passport is not ready, I have to check again in August. This is not fair,” a despondent Mhashu said as he left the passport office.

In 2008, Zimbabweans slept at the passport office to be first in line to apply as an economic crisis and hyperinflation wrecked the country’s currency under Mugabe.

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