Government to destroy unclaimed passports in two months

The ministry of Internal Affairs has issued an ultimatum to people who have not collected their passports informing them that they will be destroyed in two months.

The passports to be destroyed in September are those there were applied for and produced from 2018 to 2021.

"We are in the process of destroying some of these passports because we have passports dating back in 2018 when we started issuing electronic passports and they are lying there. So we are beginning with those of 2018. We shall first advertise all of them and if you don’t pick them in one or two months this is your last chance," said Simon Peter Mundeyi, the ministry's spokesperson.

Recently, the ministry revealed that they are stuck with over 40,000 unclaimed passports and that they don’t have space to keep them safe.

However, Mundeyi blamed part of the problem to the application process of these passports saying that most labour export companies provided particular telephone numbers for different groups of people.

"The problem is when some people were applying for passports, the labour export companies put their telephone numbers for all their clients. For instance if a company had 500 people, all messages went to one phone and these people don’t have time to read all," Mundeyi said.

For that matter, the ministry advised all those that applied from 2018 not to wait for messages but to go to Kyambogo passport pick up centre and collect them.

Relatedly, in a bid to improve on service delivery, government has also opened a call centre at the ministry for the public to inquire about the offered services free of charge.

With this call centre, the ministry spokesperson said that it help people to check on the status of their passports hence the public should not fear to ask any questions.