Immigration spokesperson right Simon Peter Mundeyi showing a copy of a passport
A reduction in Mideast jobs has led to loss of income to Uganda’s Immigration Department as applications for the National passport reduces significantly, the spokesperson of the ministry of Internal Affairs Mr. Mundeyi Simon Peter has revealed.
While addressing Journalist at Naguru based Police Headquarters, Mundeyi said that there has been a registered decline in passport application from 3,000 per day to less than 1,000 and this translates into a loss of UGX 750,000,000 per day and this totals to UGX 273.750 billion annually.
Although the Uganda’s population has grown hugely for the last decade totaling to about 45million people, Mudenyi said that only 1,346,560 people have acquired the passport and he attributed this to the mindset exhibited by Ugandans that the passport is for those who are travelling or planning to travel out of the country.
“The passport is not only for people travelling out of the country but it’s also national identification document that can be used in courts of law, land transactions and for travel purposes.’’ Mr. Mundeyi explained.
He also said that acquiring a passport has become easier since the introduction of the efficient information technology of online application, where for the standard passport, it takes only 10 working days and for the express type 2 working days are needed.
The immigration spokesperson again warned people who wish to apply for passport to stop using brokers because the department which deals with passport issuance doesn’t have or worker with brokers neither any kind of third party.
Mr. Mundeyi said that although the department charges only UGX 250, OOO and 400,000 for the standard and express passport types respectively, the fraudsters charge between UGX 1,000,000 and 2,000,000 and the recent fraud scenario occurred last week when a certain man a cattle keeper who was due to travel to Denmark for a farming workshop was defrauded of UGX 2,000,000 purportedly in helping him acquire an express passport.
Services having gone digital one can easily access Immigration facilities whenever he/she is provided can access internet and will have to open the portal that is; www.passport.go.ug and www.visas.immiration.go.ug for passport and visa applications respectively.
According to Mundeyi there’s also a group of fraudsters who have started conning people travelling to South Africa asking them to pay money purporting to get them a letter that they claim is needed for a Ugandan going to such a country now that the visa for Ugandans was scraped.
It’s from this back ground that he warned people not to give audience to such conmen because any Ugandan travelling to South African with a Diplomatic and Service Passport doesn’t need a Visa or any other document apart from his passport. He also revealed that negotiations are in advanced stages also for the two friendly countries also to have visa requirement also scraped for the ordinary passport.
By George Bukenya