Stories at the Passport office

Lately I have been hearing the strangest stories about people who have used living people’s identity documents to obtain the necessary documentation to expedite the burial of deceased people. Not making sense, read on…

Scenario 1

Man has illegal Malawian gardener. Illegal in the sense that he did not have the documents required to formalise his permanent stay in Zimbabwe.

Malawian gardener dies and man requires identification particulars in order to facilitate the burial. Man is stuck and decides to use his brothers identification cards. This brother was in the rural areas and had not used his id card in many years.

Man uses id card, states repossess id card in exchange for burial order. Gardener is buried.

Two years later brother in rural areas decides he wants to obtain a passport, unfortunately he cannot – officially, legally, according to state documents he died two years ago. They have the id card, place and date of burial to prove it.

specimen Zimbabwean Identification card

Scenario 2

Woman loses id card. She does not bother to report this loss because she has been using her driver’s license as proof of identification. Woman decides she would like to obtain a passport. She goes to the passport office to make an enquiry.

She is informed that she cannot obtain a passport because “she died” years ago. Again they have the id card, burial place and date to substantiate their claims.

Her lost id was used to obtain a burial order for a person she didn’t even know.

Granny hold on to that card

The moral of the story

1.       Do not use our identification particulars to obtain burial orders for other people. In the face of desperation, it may seem like a brilliant idea BUT it is not!!!!!  This brilliant idea will come back to haunt you.

2.       Report all lost identification documents, you have no idea what some desperate or money hungry person will do with the entire record of your existence.