By: Melanie Aanyu

The Ministry of Internal Affairs has said it is now printing between 2,500 and 3,000 passports after resuming full capacity production.

According to the ministry’s spokesperson, Simon Peter Mundeyi, in May, they had scaled down the production of passports to about 1,000 per day as they serviced their machines.

But now, he said, full production has resumed and that the booklets are enough.

“The good news I have today is that we have resumed full scale passport processing. We have been having challenges where we were only dealing with emergencies of people going abroad for treatment, studies, and quick appointments,” Mr Mundeyi told journalists in Kampala on Monday.

Nevertheless, he announced that currently, they are working on clearing a huge backlog of applicants.
“We acknowledge the delays that many passport applicants had to endure in the recent past. We are working on ensuring normal service and request those who haven’t received their passports yet to be patient as we shall have cleared all the backlog by the end of this month,” Mr Mundeyi said.

Mr Mundeyi also cautioned Ugandans who keep using brokers to get passports to desist from this.
“We ask Ugandans who keep “donating” money to these brokers to please stop it. Even if you have a lot of money, it can be used in other things than donating free money to these brokers. Some of these individuals have already been arrested and we are on the lookout for others,” he said.

He also asked the public to continue reporting such people as their enforcement team alongside security agencies are on the lookout for them as well.

He also called upon members of the public that applied for passports in 2019 to 2021 to go and pick them because they are ready.