The Ministry of Internal Affairs has cautioned those seeking to get, renew or replace their passports adopt the online method of application as opposed to making the long line at the ministry headquarters.
Last January, government introduced new e-passports and in December the ministry launched an online passport application system. This was purposely believed to help in doing away with corrupt and unscrupulous middlemen who had been known to defraud Ugandans.
It was also expected to improve the turnover of passports from seven days to 48 hours on average and also reduce the congestion and long queues at the headquarters.
However, ever since the beginning of this year, passport applicants have been lining up as early as 4:00 am with queues estimated to reach more than 700 metres.
The issue forced the Internal affairs junior minister Kania Obiga on Tuesday to come out to preach the advantages of applying online.
“In just one month, we have so far issued 83,233 passports as of January 27, 2020. If you compare this with the previous statistics, you will find that we issued 15,000 passports in the same timeline. Such services are available but people just need to embrace the technology,” he said.
However, Henry Kanyanza, a resident of Nansana whom this website found in the queue said the online application is slow at times is the response is very poor.
He blamed the government.
“Online application will work perfectly when we have a new government but not this one. I have used it several times and I failed,” he said.
However, Kania said there are some limitations to the online system such as, less awareness due to low publicity, fake Websites, and at times network failures which make operations hard.
Applications for e-passports can be done by via www.passport.go.ug or www.ecitizen.go.ug. These websites have 10 pages that will need to be filled, fully.
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