Spokesperson for the Department, Joseph Chauwa, says this is part of the upgrading of the passport issuance system project.

Chauwa says the Department will resume receiving the new applications on Tuesday January 14, 2020.

“We are now working towards the finalization of the project of migrating to e-passport and what we are doing now is to replace the current system with the new one. We believe we will be able to complete this task within the five days,” he said.

Chauwa says the Department has given grace period of twelve months till December 31, 2020 for people to replace their old passports with the e-passport.

“People will still be able to use the old passport until December 31 but we are encouraging them to come and replace the old one during this period.

“This is not the first time to change the passport and we normally give the grace period.

“The electronic passport has more security features than the current passport. We are working to be more efficient in upgrading the passport system at the same time conforming to international standards that require countries to adopt the electronic passport,” said Chauwa.