Passport crisis at Home Affairs

Home Affairs has placed a national embargo on the issuing of normal passports as there are no new passports available for processing. This means a maximum of one-thousand-600 passports can be issued country-wide, against the average of sixty-thousand per day. Simultaneously another crisis is being experienced in Gauteng with the availability of temporary residence permits. The permits have also not been printed and as a result were not available in regional offices. Attie Tredoux, a specialist immigration legal practitioner, says it is the first time in the country's history that the department simply has no new passport blanks available for issuing.