Govt threatens to destroy 30,000 passports
An official from the Internal Affairs Ministry is seen placing blank passports on a printer at the Ministry's headquarters in Kampala on May 9, 2022. PHOTO/ISAAC KASAMANI
The Ministry of Internal Affairs has threatened to destroy more than 30,0000 uncollected passports at Kyambogo collection centre if the owners do not pick them by the end of this month.
Addressing the media in Kampala yesterday, Mr Simon Mundeyi, the ministry’s spokesperson, said there are passports which have remained unclaimed for periods longer than one year, noting that soon, these will be burnt if not collected by the owners.
READ MORE
“We request members of the public who applied for passports, paid, scheduled appointments and their passports printed to come and pick them. We now have about 30,000 passports in our stores in Kyambogo, which have not been claimed by the owners,” Mr Mundeyi said.
He added: “The ministry is, therefore, planning to destroy passports which have taken a year in store because we don’t have where to keep them.”
Mr Mundeyi said efforts by the ministry to advertise the unclaimed passports in the newspapers to have the owners pick them have not yielded fruit.
The ministry blamed the problem on applicants who put wrong contacts while applying for passports and when messages notifying them to pick their documents are sent, they go to wrong numbers.
Mr Mundeyi noted that after the system upgrade, which also included an Automatic Finger Integrated System (AFIS), they are now producing more passports in a bid to help clear the backlog of unprinted passports.
“We are now producing 3,000 passports daily yet before, we were producing 2,000 passports and because of this, we expect numbers to be a little high at the passport collection centre in Kyambogo,” he said.
He noted that in a period of one or two weeks, they will have cleared the backlog and printing of passports will return to normal.
Mr Mundeyi also revealed that the ministry has opened up a fourth passport centre abroad to add onto the ones already opened in Abu Dhabi in the United Arab Emirates, Washington in the US and London in the UK.
“We have opened a passport centre in Pretoria, South Africa, to serve the Ugandan diaspora community.
Applicants can access all passport services at this centre. They can schedule appoints, get enrolled, interviewed and pick their passports from there,” Mr Mundeyi said.
He said others will soon be opened in Ottawa in Canada, Beijing in China and Copenhagen in Denmark.
