A South African passport. Picture: Gallo Images / Heather Delaney
If you’re thinking of traveling overseas and do not have a passport yet, you need hurry up before the new fees kick in.
The application fee for a standard South African passport for both adults and children will increase from next month.
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The adjustments to passport fees were signed off by Home Affairs Minister Dr Aaron Motsoaledi and published in the government gazette on Thursday.
“These Regulations shall be called the Seventeenth Amendment of the Regulations made under the South African Passports and Travel Documents Act 1994, and will come into operation on 1 November 2022,” the gazette reads.
The increase will see a 32-page passport costing R600, which is a R200 increase from the current amount of R400.
For a maxi passport, which 48-pages, it will cost citizens R1 200, while the fee for a diplomatic passport will be R600.
These fees are relevant to those apply for a passport within South Africa.
If you are apply outside South Africa, it will cost you R1 200 for a standard passport – including for children – and R2 400 for a maxi passport.
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Passport or travel document replacements will cost double the amount under the new fee structure, unless the original had been “lost, stolen or damaged through no negligence on the part of the holder”.
The South African passport ranks third on the African continent, after Mauritius and Seychelles, while it sits at number 55 globally.
According to the Henley Passport Index, which is the foremost authority on the authoritative ranking of all the world’s passports, South Africans can visit 105 countries out of 227 travel destinations without a visa.
In August, Motsoaledi revealed that new legislation was required to tackle a number of issues including fraudulent passports.
The Home Affairs Minister told MPs in the National Council of Provinces (NCOP) that young migrants were obtaining retirement visas fraudulently, adding that South Africa’s passport security has become “a laughing stock” due to fraud.
In order to curb this, a passport can now only be collected strictly from the Department of Home Affairs office where it was applied for and only the person who applied for that passport can come and collect it by activating it through a fingerprint.
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