Government to start issuing electronic passports in January

Additionally, Mutambi stated in the tweet, “This will come along with improved service delivery. Immigration shall be relying on the National Identity Registration Authority (Nira) database in the issuance of passports.”

Earlier this year the ministry had been forced to postpone issuance of e-passports, which it had said it would start doing on April 3. The delay was attributed to processes in procurement. Kenya at around that time also postponed issuance of e-passports to September 1, 2018.

Dr Mutambi did not divulge details especially on how before issuing e-passports immigration will rectify the mistakes NIRA’s data entrants made on many national IDs.

Many Ugandans have IDs that have misspelled names, wrong birth dates and middle names that are not theirs. Some of them have not been able to make the necessary changes because of the lengthy processes it takes to make them, while others do not readily have the Shs52, 000 to NIRA, through Diamond Trust Bank, to rectify the mistake(s).

Through the tweet, Dr Mutambi did not address the question of how much the government will spend on the electronic passports.
Earlier Daily Monitor reported that each biometric passport will cost Shs150,000. That would be comparatively cheaper than what it costs in Tanzania – TShs150, 000 (about Shs245,640), and in Kenya – KShs4,450 (Shs167,762).

In the East African Community, Kenya, Tanzania, Burundi and Rwanda are already issuing e-passports.
Ugandans who already have the traditional passports but want the electronic ones even before the traditional one expires, will have to surrender the old one and pay for the new one.

The East African Community set December 31, 2018 as a deadline for phasing out the issuance of the traditional passports.