The Ministry of Internal Affairs has said Ugandans whose national IDs have expired can ably apply and receive their passports.
The ministry spokesperson, Simon Mundeyi said on Monday that they have received several queries over Ugandans with expired national IDs and their ability to apply for passports.
“If you lost your national ID, come with your national identification number(NIN) if you have it and you will be able to process the passport. You don’t need to have your national ID copy,” Mundeyi said.
Almost all Ugandans national IDs are expiring this year, having been issued in 2014 and this has caused concern for several Ugandans who are wishing to apply for passports.
The National Identification and Registration Authority(NIRA) recently announced a mass enrollment for new national IDs with new security features and biometrics including the iris.
According to the Ministry of Internal Affairs, they have harmonized with NIRA that despite the forthcoming exercise to get new national IDs, the national identification numbers will not change.
Mundeyi explained that because of this, Ugandans with expired passports will be able to process their new travel documents even without physical national IDs, provided they can present their NINs.
“You don’t need your national ID. Just put in the NIN in the application form.”
50,000 passports uncollected
In a related development, the Ministry of Internal Affairs has said it is currently stuck with 50,000 uncollected passports.
Ministry spokesperson, Simon Mundeyi said the uncollected documents date as far as 2019 when they were processed and printed.
“this year alone, between January to April, we have 2000 passports which have not been collected yet they were applied for this year. Since every day we have new applicants, having so many uncollected passports poses a challenge to our stores,”Mundeyi said.
He said some of the owners were sent messages asking them to collect the passports but were unable to receive them.
“In some rare circumstances, the passports are ready, messages are sent to them to collect them but their phones are off or they don’t have network. If a message is sent and the phone is off or doesn’t have network, it will bounce and will never come back.”
“Most of these passports belong to girls who were supposed to be taken to Middle East and since business has nosedived, they lost interest in the documents as they returned to their villages.”
