‘Bambi Come for Your Passports’, Ministry of Internal Affairs Stuck With Over 20000 Booklets
By: Kyeyune Ali
Some of the hardest things to get in Uganda by an ordinary Ugandan os Passport and driving permit due to the process, people fear to go through.
Today at Naguru, Police headquarters in their weekly security press conference,
the Ministry of Internal Affairs has confirmed that over 20,000 new passport booklets have not been picked by owners.
Simon Peter Mundeyi, the ministry spokesperson said that with 3000 passports processed and printed every day, the Directorate of Immigration and Citizenship Control is currently stuck after owners failed to pick their booklets which have accumulated at all the passport centres around the country.
“There is another accumulation of passports totaling to over 20,000 booklets. Many of these applied, paid for them, we processed them but the owners are not picking them yet we are running short of storage space at our centres. It is going to give us a challenge,” Mundeyi said.
He also explained that most of the passports were applied for in 2018, 2019 and 2020. They noted that some of the applicants put in wrong information including phone contacts and were not able to receive notifications to pick their booklets.
“The problem could also be that the applicants haven’t received messages calling them to pick their booklets because they used brokers who intentionally put wrong numbers as a way to continue fleecing the applicant’s money. They(brokers) know that if they put wrong numbers, the applicants won’t receive messages and will become desperate and definitely look for them.”
The Ministry of Internal Affairs spokesperson asked that anyone who applied for a passport and hasn’t yet received it should contact the ministry via its social media platforms for clarification on the stage of their application.
An ordinary East African e-passport for in Uganda is at Shs250,000,shs400,000 for a service passport and shs500,000 for a diplomatic passport.
And they revealed that an applicant needs only two weeks to get his or her passport if it’s ordinary and then the express is for only two working days.