The government through the Department of Immigration and Citizenship Services plans to hike passport fees.
According to a document Malawi24 has seen, an ordinary passport at normal processing will be going at K90,000, a passport at express processing will be pegged at K180,000 while replacing a lost passport will cost K150,000.
For minors, K80,000 will be needed for an ordinary passport at normal processing, K120,000 for urgent processing and K100,000 for replacing a lost passport.
Currently, an ordinary passport is pegged at K48, 500 for normal processing which takes 21 days, K58, 500 for urgent processing which takes five days and K68, 500 for express which is issued 24 hours after application.
Director General of the Department, Masauko Medi said recently that the current fees is below the production cost and government was subsidizing the passport.
According to Medi, after the introduction of the national identity card there is no need to subsidize the passport because the document is not needed for identification.
The hike comes as government is also expected to roll out the electronic passport next year.
Hama Tuma, an Ethiopian author, highlighted how people fall from grace because punishing people with these harsh prices.
The prices had already been hiked in September
Oppression, greedy, government etc