By Melanie Aanyu,

The Ministry of Internal Affairs has revealed that the passport office has halved production of passports so as to enable a system upgrade that is aimed at curbing forgery.

Addressing journalists in Kampala, Mr Simon Mundeyi, the ministry spokesperson, said the upgrade will “include an Automatic Finger Integrated System (AFIS),” that he said will stop passport duplication.

The ministry expects to finish the upgrade by the end of the month.
Mundeyi also responded to concerns that are currently manifesting over glitches in acquiring the new East African Community e-passport.

He said part of the problem cropped up because they were until recently relying on the previous old readable machine system, which was slow.
The other crucial challenge that the ministry is grappling with is overwhelming applications, including producing instant [express] passports.

He said because of this problem, people who were initially meant to get express passports in about three to five days were now getting them in a space of about two to three weeks.

Then, for ordinary passports, some people were getting them close to two months rather than the one intended month.
These problems, the ministry said, will be resolved once the system has been upgraded.