The government plans to dispose of over 50,000 unclaimed passports valued at Shs12.5 billion to free up storage space, as announced by the Directorate of Citizenship and Immigration Control.
These passports, mostly belonging to individuals seeking employment as maids in the Middle East, have remained unclaimed for extended periods, some exceeding six years. Simon Mundeyi, spokesperson for the Ministry of Internal Affairs, revealed that an additional 2,000 passports applied for between January and April this year have added to the existing stockpile of unclaimed passports.
“We now have about 50,000 passports in our stores across the country, which have not been claimed by the owners. Since every day we have new applicants, having so many uncollected passports poses a challenge to our stores,” he said.
Uganda issues three types of passports, namely ordinary, official, and diplomatic, with light blue for ordinary, green for official, and red for diplomatic passports. However, the Directorate could not readily categorize the uncollected travel documents.
But Mr Mundeyi said: “Most of these passports belong to girls who were supposed to be taken to the Middle East and since the labour export activities have drastically reduced, they lost interest in the documents as they returned to their villages.”
Application for an ordinary passport booklet costs Shs250,000, while the official passports (also called service passports) are charged Shs400,000, and the diplomatic acquired at Shs500,000. It costs Shs400,000 to process an express ordinary passport in three days.
Most of the maids who seek jobs in the Middle East pay Shs250,000 for an ordinary passport, which would amount to nearly Shs12.5 billion when the bulk of 50,000 unclaimed passports are considered as those of maids. However, some of the applicants opt for express processing, which means the cost would climb higher even for this category of domestic workers.
“The ministry is, therefore, planning to destroy passports which have spent years in the store because we don’t have where to keep them. These passports have been unclaimed since 2018,” Mr Mundeyi told Monitor.
The Ministry said the buildup of uncollected passports is partly due to applicants not being able to receive messages asking them to collect their travel documents.
“In some rare cases, the passports are ready, messages are sent to them [applicants] to collect but their phones are often off or they just don’t have a network. If a message is sent and the phone is off or doesn’t have a network, it will bounce and will never be re-sent,” Mr Mundeyi said.
To expedite the passport application process and alleviate delays, the ministry urges applicants to promptly collect their passports or check their status on the ministry’s website.
Passports serve as essential travel documents, facilitating entry into and exit from a country, adherence to visa requirements in foreign nations, and enabling citizens to seek assistance while abroad.
Ugandan passport issuance regulations specify a four-day turnaround time for express passports and a two-week processing period for ordinary passports.
According to data from the Ministry of Gender, Labour, and Social Development, a significant number of Ugandan workers—120,459—departed the country between January 2022 and December 2023 in pursuit of employment opportunities. Notably, the majority of these workers were women, totaling 109,773, compared to 10,686 men. Over the past decade, the Middle East has consistently been the preferred destination, attracting 107,448 workers.
