The Ministry of Internal Affairs has revealed that only three percent of Ugandans own passports which are crucial documents.
“Ever since we started issuing electronic passports in 2018, only 1.3 million passports both paper-based and polycarbonate have been issued. This means we have only issued passports to 1.3 million Ugandans out of the 45 or so million Ugandans,” the Ministry of Internal Affairs spokesperson, Simon Mundeyi told journalists on Monday.
“These figures show almost 43 million Ugandans don’t have passports.”
He was addressing the weekly security briefing at the Police headquarters in Naguru.
Uganda last year updated its current paper-based e-passport to a polycarbonate e-passport type.
However, both the paper-based and polycarbonate electronic passports will continue to be used until the former will gradually be phased out.
Speaking on Monday, the Internal Affairs spokesperson said it was astonishing that whereas during the Covid pandemic and thereafter, the number of Ugandans applying for passports had gone up to 3000 applicants per day, the number has gradually reduced.
“We put in place new system because we anticipated a big number. We anticipated 3000 passport applications per day but this number has reduced to less than 1000 applicants per day,”Mundeyi said.
He encouraged Ugandans to apply for passports since the system has now been streamlined and they can get their passports in now time.
“I call upon Ugandans to desist from using brokers to apply for passports because there is no reason to do this when system is as efficient as it can be.”
“Passports are not only travel documents but can be used as security when buying land and many other uses. Ugandan should also desist from applying for passports when they have a journey abroad. This should be something everyone should have.”
An ordinary electronic e-passport goes for shs250,000 while those who wish to process express passports will add shs150,000 to make it shs400,000.
On the other side, an official passport costs shs400,000 and a diplomatic passport costs shs500,000.
