By George Bukenya
The Ministry of Internal Affairs Directorate of Immigration is hunting for six illegal immigrants who were arrested but escaped from Namanve detention centre on July 15th 2024.
According to Internal Affairs spokesperson Simon Peter Mundeyi, the escapes include, five Eritrean Nationals and one Ethiopian were due to appear in court on July 15th 2024.
The suspects were among the 135 foreign nationals arrested on July 13th, 2024 in areas of Kabalagala, Muyenga and Kansanga during a routine field inspection aimed at combating illegal immigrants’ cases in the country.
The escapes are identified as Zemechel Tesfemeryam Hagos, Habeki Shewit, Robert Solomon, Pommel Goytom, Alexander Dkhamichael and Gortom Maleke.
“These individuals are considered dangerous and this has prompted us to collaborate with other security agencies and their respective communities to locate them,” Mundeyi said.
He also urged members of the public with relevant information leading to their arrest to conduct us or the police.
Meanwhile Mundeyi also encouraged public to report incidents involving foreign individuals participating in small-scale trading, particularly hawking household items like kitchenware, among others.
These individuals operate using cars or motorcycles, moving from door to door causing inconvenience to residents while doing business illegally and selling goods on hire purchase terms or take people’s national identification cards contrary to law.
They are common in Kampala and other major cities and they get goods from Indians who operate wholesale businesses and are paid on commission basis.
The internal Affairs mouth piece also clarified on the issue of foreign nationals in Uganda emphasing that they must have a residence facility a document that allows they to stay legally here regardless of their country of origin.
His reaction follows a misconception by some East African Community members that they don’t require residence facilities while in Uganda.
“ The East African Community members residing and working in Uganda must have a resident facility document for example work permit, student pass ,dependant pass, certificate of residence and an intern pass for foreign students who apply to do their internship here after completing their college or University education.’’ Mundeyi stated.
The also said that there are special passes issued to foreigners who are come here to work on business documents and this have got a maximum period of three months. EAC members are not charge for such facility but must apply for it but people coming outside this region are required to pay for such documents.
Mundeyi also clarified on the issue of expired national identity cards saying that nationals need not to worry that they can still use them to travel in EAC member countries because what is required on the identity card is the ‘nin’ and this doesn’t expire.
He also told reporters that foreigners from Tanzania and Burundi for instance students are not charged for passes and visas but for other documents they are supposed to pay to access them.
According to Mundeyi government charges between US dollar 700-2500 for the work permit and students who come outside the EAC region are charged US dollar 100 while the visa for any foreign out the said region cost US dollar 50.
Meanwhile, he also told reporter that a total of 5,900,102 applied for the facilities and these include those going out and coming into the country in 2023/2024 financial year. Of these 266,537 were issued visas to enter Uganda, 719 resident certificates issued, dependant pass (6737), work permits (12,970), special passes (7,338).
In 2023/2024 a total of 752 Ugandans who had travelled abroad without proper documents were repatriated here while 532 foreigners were also removed from the country some having found with expired facilities, others with wrong documents.