The struggles of people with state papers and documentation are never-ending, and alongside the citizens' inability to secure civil status documents, a new crisis arises: their inability to obtain financial stamps, especially the one-thousand lira stamps. Even when civil status documents are secured, obtaining these stamps remains a significant problem, particularly the one-thousand lira stamps, which are the most necessary and relied upon in many transactions.
Zaher Al-Kassar, the Mukhtar of Babbien, spoke to "Nidaa Al-Watan" about the "great suffering in civil registration offices in Akkar and in the civil registry office of Al-Abda." He said, "We struggle to secure stamps to complete people's transactions, especially as students are approaching school and there are young people preparing to travel with appointments for passports that they have been waiting for months, which may be missed due to the lack of civil status documents."
He added, "Even though the center's president and the employees are doing their utmost to facilitate citizens' transactions, it is the responsibility of the Ministry of Interior and Municipalities to provide stamps for people instead of leaving them to the black market, where the price of a one-thousand lira stamp sometimes exceeds 20,000 lira... Moreover, the Ministry of Interior must ensure that biometric civil status applications are available so that students are not deprived of their registration for the academic year just due to a paper."
Huda Saeed recounted her long journey, having traveled dozens of kilometers from Akkar to Tripoli to secure one-thousand lira stamps to issue a new individual civil status document for her son to register in school. She added, "The stamp costs one thousand lira, but I bought five from a coffee vendor for 100,000 lira after one of my relatives intervened with the vendor since he refused to sell the stamps."
Many, like Huda, are facing similar situations. A contracted teacher (Ali M) had to buy a five-thousand lira stamp to renew his annual contract at one of the public institutes because he could not find any one-thousand lira stamps, paying 40,000 Lebanese lira for it.
The issues with civil registration offices don't stop there; if we add the problems with diesel and the difficulty in obtaining it, acquiring a civil status document becomes more challenging than obtaining a visa to escape. Public services and transactions in government departments, no matter how simple, have become increasingly costly and difficult in a country of hardships.
