The Directorate of Citizenship and Immigration Control –DCIC says owners of over 30,000 passports, of the 40,000 passports that were condemned to be burnt before the end of this month have resurfaced and claimed them.
DCIC through the spokesperson of the ministry of internal affairs, Simon Peter Mundeyi, on June 27 announced that it was going burn over 37,000 unclaimed passports because it had run out of space where to keep them.These were passports that owners applied and paid for in the years 2018, 2019 and 2020.
The number of unclaimed passports later increased to more than 40,000 after including those that were not collected last year. DCIC gave a two month’s ultimatum which was ending mid this month and vowed to burn any passport that would not be collected within that period.
However, Mundeyi on Monday revealed that ever since the threat to burn unclaimed passports was made two months ago, owners have been resurfacing and they are now left with only 10,000 unclaimed passports.
Because of the good turn up of passport owners, Mundeyi said they are going to continue encouraging people to pick their passports from the Kyambogo collection centre or upcountry offices. DCIC said it is now optimistic that owners of the remaining ones would also resurface.
Although DCIC insisted that owners had given incorrect telephone numbers, something that hindered efforts to send them messages in order to pick up their passports, sources in July informed URN that the ministry’s messaging system had issues and messages were bouncing back.
Another problem that led to the accumulation of unclaimed passports was labour export companies that would only give telephone line for hundreds of applicants they take abroad for employment. DCIC accused labour export companies of hijacking rights of applicants to individually collect their passports and as a results, several messages could bounce back since they were going to one Sim Card.
Mundeyi said even if they successfully sent over 500 messages to one Sim Card line, chances were that many would go unread thus denying owners a chance to know that they are read. This, Mundeyi, emerged after establishing that most of the applicants had come through labour export companies.
In response to DCIC’S accusation, Ronnie Mukundane, the spokesperson of Uganda Association of External Recruitment Agencies -UAERA, said it is the companies that pay for travel documents and that is why they always wish to be informed once the passports of their clients are ready.
“Ideally, we would wish that when the passports are ready, the companies should also be informed and be present at the time of picking,” Mukundane said. “We on many occasions see applicants disappearing after picking up their passports. This causes a loss to the company that paid for the acquisition of that passport.”
Many applicants, after reading stories of passports that were going to be burnt, followed DCIC’s advise of crosschecking with the Kyambogo collection centre.
Indeed, people have been finding their passports ready yet they had never received any message informing them that they had been printed.
