The Ministry of Internal Affairs has destroyed a staggering 158,000 passports that were not collected for a long period of time. The move was also as a result of limited storage at their offices in Kyambogo.
The passports are valued at about UG shs40 billion.
Simon Mundeyi, said that numerous Ugandans had applied for passports but had not collected them for years.
“So, what do we do. We have been calling out, we don’t have where to keep these passports, so we went ahead and destroyed the 158000 passports,” he added.
He also revealed that the Ministry of Internal Affairs is currently facing a backlog of 72,580 unclaimed passports stored at Kyambogo.
Among these, 12,580 passports have been issued from 2018, while 60,000 passports were returned to the ministry by the external labour exporting companies.
He said the passports remain untouched in their storage facilities, as the rightful owners have not come forward to collect them to date.
“These were between the year 2018 to date. We have called out the applicants, we have sent messages, we have talked about these passports. Of course, we cannot publish these passports because of the privacy law prevailing,” he noted.
He stressed that attempts to reaching out to the applicants to pick them, has proven futile without any response.
He warned that if the owners do not respond to the request to collect them, they will be destroyed.
He explained that the 60,000 passports were returned by the labor export companies due to their inability to find employment for the applicants in the Arab countries.
“We urge these people who fall in this category to come and check on us because many are still valid till 2030 and 2031. We want to call upon all Ugandans who were not able to travel abroad to come check on the passports. We return it to you freely because it is your property,” he said.
He warned that if they are no collected, they will be compelled to destroy them too.
