- We have an incredible number of passports and ID cards that have been here for three to four months.
If people don't come and collect them, we will simply have to destroy them, says Örjan Hvass, group manager for support and service at the police in Kalmar.
The police find it difficult to understand why people do not pick up their clear passports and ID cards.
Especially considering that you have already paid for them.
A passport costs SEK 400 and is valid for five years.
The police will be tougher
At the police station in Kalmar alone, there are now 346 passports and 77 ID cards that have been there for more than three months and have therefore expired.
The value of the passports, which are now literally at risk of going up in smoke, is thus almost SEK 150,000.
- I think it feels completely crazy, but now we have to start getting tougher.
After four months we will destroy them, says Örjan Hvass.
A total of 172,000 passports
In total, around 172,000 passports are waiting to be picked up around the country.
But how many of them have passed the best-before date, the police central have no exact figures.
- We don't have a figure on how many of them stayed for more than three months, says Nadia Jaber, press secretary at the police's national media center.
An even higher sum in Jönköping County
In Jönköping County, there are currently just over 6,000 passports waiting for their owners.
Ten percent of these, around 600, have passed their extradition deadline, ie they have been delivered to the police more than three months ago.
The passes are worth approximately SEK 240,000, money that the owners have already paid.
- Of course, we would rather that they be picked up than that they be canceled so that the citizen does not have to apply for a new passport, says Emelie Petersson who is group manager for Support and Service at the police in Jönköping County.
In the clip, you can also hear how the police destroy the passports in a very thorough way.