National IDs can reduce passport forgeries - Govt

By Moses Walubiri

Uganda is not about to see the end of its passports ending up in the hands of foreigners – some of whom are lords of the underworld – unless, according to immigration boss, Godfrey Sasagah, “all Ugandans are issued with national IDS.”

The Director Citizenship and Immigration Control, Sasagah contends that the current layers of checks aimed at verifying the authenticity of information adduced by passport applicants is not watertight enough to preclude aliens from slipping through.

“We issue passports relying on recommendations of Local Councils (LCs). Many times, there are many loopholes because LCs officials are not thorough,” Sasagah told New Vision yesterday.

Uganda has not had functioning LCs for close to a decade following Rubaramira Ruranga’s successful petition to the Constitutional Court impugning the legal regime under which the LC elections were being conducted.

The then opposition figure convinced court that the 1997 Local Governments Act and 1993 National Youth and Women Council Act were passed under the Movement system and were no longer applicable in a multiparty dispensation.

With the Local Government Act yet to be amended to address the legal challenges that have thus far prevented conducting LC polls for two consecutive general elections, immigration has continued to rely on LC executives whose mandates expired ten years ago.

“National IDs will capture applicants’ bio data and ease our work,” Sasagah said, acknowledging that even when national IDs are issued out; it will only “significantly” reduce forgeries.

In a phone interview in which he addressed a host of issues pertaining to the spate of incidents in which foreigners with a criminal record are reported to be using Uganda’s travel documents, Sasagah noted that plugging the loopholes will require “a multipronged approach,” including rolling out e-passports.

An e-passport has a chip containing one’s bio data embedded in a passport, which precludes chances of forgeries, like people swapping passports.

Pertaining the spate of members of criminal rings – especially West African drug barons - in oriental countries accessing Uganda’s passports, Sasagah revealed that government has accepted to dispatch immigration officers to all its missions abroad, “beginning with those of special interest like China,” to “document Ugandans in those countries.”

The media has been awash with tales of suspected drugs traffickers and prostitution rings sullying Uganda’s image through using its passports in oriental countries.

A fact finding mission to China, India and other neighboring oriental countries by the Equal Opportunities Committee of parliament mid last year revealed that people trafficking Ugandan girls into prostitution are mainly West Africans using Ugandan passports.

Ugandans living in United Arab Emirates, through the Shadow Minister of Internal Affairs, Hussein Kyanjo, have long appealed to parliament to cause an inquiry into how criminals from West Africa are easily accessing Ugandan passports.

Uganda has three passport issuing centers outside the country – London, Pretoria and Washington – with government toying with the idea of opening another in Beijing or New Delhi to address what Sasagah labeled “increasing business interests in those countries.”