The Ministry of Internal Affairs spokesperson Simon Peter Mundeyi has revealed that they are stuck with over 20,000 uncollected passports.
Speaking during the weekly media press briefing at Police Headquarters in Naguru on Monday, Mr Mundeyi said they are stuck with uncollected passports from their collection centres; Gulu, Mbale, Kyambogo and Mbarara.
He added that everyday over 3,000 passports are processed and printed however currently they don’t have the storage space since the owners of the already printed passports have failed to collect them.
“If applicants don’t pick up the already printed passport booklets, we shall face challenges in the storage space. So Ugandans who applied for these passports, please come and collect your passports. Those who have not yet received messages can call on our number 0417102600 or send us a tweet @dcicuganda or @mia-Uganda,” he said.
Mr. Mundeyi added that one reason why some people have not yet picked up their passports is the poor filling of the application forms and the increased use of middlemen who intentionally filled in the wrong telephone numbers on the application form because they wanted to continue asking for money from the applicants.
“We noted that the problem could be because applicants did not receive the sms informing them to collect their passports due to most likely two reasons; Some applicants put incorrect telephone numbers on their application forms and the commonest problem has been replacing zero with letter O. Instead of putting 077… some applicant put O77… therefore the system has not been able to read the number because it treats O as a letter, not a figure. Secondly, some people used brokers and these brokers intentionally put wrong numbers on the application froms hoping to get money from the applicants,” he revealed.
“Therefore we call upon applicants to always be very vigilant as they fill these forms and not to use middlemen. We ask you to do this by yourselves because the application system is straightforward and user-friendly don’t involve in third parties.”
Mr. Mundeyi also warned that the Directorate does not work with middlemen or brokers. He also revealed that some brokers have even opened offices and most desparate people have been lured by them.
“I will not get tired of talking about these brokers some of them have opened offices at Dewinton, Nasser and Nkurumah Road of course we did manage to send them out of the premises of the Ministry of Internal Affairs but they are still going out there and deceive desperate Ugandans looking for Passport people. We appeal to Ugandans not to involve brokers because the system has been simplified.”
According to records from the Ministry, they are mostly stuck with passports applied for in 2018, 2019 and 2020.
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