Govt set to open five new passport offices

Government is set to open five new passport enrolment offices in different parts of the country.
The new offices will be set up in Arua, Mbale, Gulu, Jinja, and Lira districts.

The offices will be operational starting next month. However, the office in Mbarara City is already operational, according to officials from the Ministry of Internal Affairs.
While addressing the media yesterday, Dr Benon Mugisha Mutambi, the ministry’s permanent secretary (PS), said: “Passport enrolment services have been decentralised to ease service delivery.”

He also said another office will be opened in Kampala to reduce congestion at the ministry’s headquarters given the need to observe Covid-19 standard operating procedures.
Mr Mutambi said they are going to reinstate full scale operations by implementing a two shift system at the headquarters for the passport section which will run from 7am to 8pm each day.
He noted that passport application portals and the scheduler system have been configured to avail the time slots for the applicants on any given day of the week.

The PS added that they are going to increase on the daily enrolment numbers to match the 2,100 applications received daily and the entire production line leading to passport issuance will be doubled to 2,000 passports daily.
Thousands of applicants queue up at the Internal Affairs ministry headquarters in Kampala, as early as 3am, to receive passports.
Many of these are youth seeking employment abroad especially in the Arab countries.

-Daily Monitor