Taliban-controlled officials at the Afghanistan passport department are asking for bribes in order to obtain approvals for Afghans who want to flee the country, Afghanistan’s Kabul-based TOLOnews reported Thursday.
”They suggested I give them 10,000 Afs [about $110] to issue my passport. They told me that they have people inside the department, and they will finish the process,” an Afghan passport applicant identified as Faisal said in the report.
Another applicant stated that officials demanded $700 to $800 (around 63,700 to 72,000. Afs) in order to approve passports for Afghans to leave Afghanistan.
These large sums are a result of the Taliban’s ban on U.S. currency earlier in the week.
Bloomberg reports that the Taliban government has banned foreign currencies, as it continues to seek frozen reserves of billions of dollars from the United States.
The central bank without these funds has struggled to get money into the war-torn country’s economy since August’s withdrawal of U.S. troops.
”The use of foreign currencies has negative effects on the country’s economy,” Taliban spokesman Zabiullah Mujahid said in a statement to Bloomberg. ”Violators will be dealt with legally.”
According to the story, the U.S. dollar is responsible for two-thirds (or more) of Afghanistan’s bank deposits and half of Afghanistan’s national loans.
The Af, Afghanistan’s national currency and has been falling against the dollar since August’s Taliban takeover. It now values about 90 Afs per $1.
According to the Taliban government’s Intelligence Department, officials who demand bribes in order to obtain their passports will be arrested and charged.
The Taliban government’s Intelligence Department said it is arresting and charging officials who ask people for bribes to get their passports.
”The Intelligence Department has arrested several people in connection with such cases,” Passport Department head Alam Gul Haqqani said. ”One of them was working in the biometric section of the [passport] department.”
People waiting in Kabul to get out of the line are asking for the government to open offices in other provinces to cater to the large number of refugees who want to flee.
TOLO reported that Prime Minister Hasan Akhund directed the department to issue passports for those who have paper identification cards.
TOLOnews, a 24-hour television news channel and an extension to the popular TOLO TV network, is now available via the internet outside of the city, according to the organization.
