Indian embassy promises to fix Switzerland vs Swaziland mixup

The ruler of Swaziland King Mswati III has announced that the country will be officially renamed the Kingdom of eSwatini Keystone

Members of the Indian diaspora have alerted the Indian embassy in Switzerland about an error on their identity cards that listed Swaziland as their country of origin. 

A certain number of permanent residence permits called Overseas Citizen of IndiaExternal link (OCI) cards issued to Swiss citizens of Indian origin had SWZ as the country code instead of CHE, according to the Indian embassy. 

Those in possession of such cards have been urged to trade them in for corrected ones free of charge, said the embassy in a statement on Tuesday. 

Issue of new OCI cards to Swiss citizens having OCI cards with wrong country code of SWZ instead of CHE pic.twitter.com/Sv8sAR1VlcExternal link

— India in Switzerland, The Holy See & Liechtenstein (@IndiainSwiss) May 11, 2018External link

There is a possibility that such mistakes will become a thing of the past. During the 50-year celebrations of the independence of Swaziland from the British this April, the ruler of Swaziland King Mswati III announced that the country will be officially renamed the Kingdom of eSwatini. It is not yet known if the country code will also change. 

That does not resolve the threat posed by Sweden though. In April, a symbolic attemptExternal link by the New York Stock Exchange to mark the initial public offering (IPO) of Swedish music-streaming service Spotify was marred by the flying of the red and white Swiss flag instead of the Swedish one. Though the mistake was rectified within minutes, social media users were quick to jump on the issue, and swissinfo.ch FacebookExternal link followers confirmed that the confusion wasn’t a one-off.