The Uganda Registration Services Bureau has cautioned the residents of Lango region against celebrating marriages or wedding ceremonies in unregistered and non-gazetted places of worship.

The bureau says the licence is only shillings 200,000 and is issued by the justice ministry but whoever conducts ceremonies in any church falling under the non-compliant category, practices illegal marriage and can be challenged in court.

The team headed by the deputy registrar general in charge of finance and administration, Alex Anganya, was on Friday launching mass business registration and teaching people about civil marriage in the region.

URSB extended the launch of mass business registration in the sub-region with a target to register 800,000 businesses in the country by the end of 2025. 

Bishop Joseph Omara, the overseer of the National Born-Again Pentecostal Churches of Uganda in charge of the Lango raising his concerns over the unregistered churches during the launch at Margarita Palace in Lira City.

Making a presentation on civil registration during the launch at Margarita Place Hotel in Lira city on Friday, the director of civil registration, Vincent Katutsi, advised people to ask their church leaders before conducting the wedding ceremony if the church is licensed and is recognised by the Government.

“If your priest, pastor or reverence is celebrating marriages in your church, please ask if they have a licence because if the church is not licensed, whatever they are doing is criminal and illegal,” he said.

“It is criminal and a subject for prosecution,” Katutsi said while responding to the concerns raised by Bishop Joseph Omara, the overseer of the National Born-Again Pentecostal Churches of Uganda in charge of the Lango.

Omara had earlier said there are a lot of challenges with churches including the main religious body (Catholic and Anglican) where most of them are not gazetted to celebrate marriages.

“There are very few churches that are gazetted for marriage and yet marriages are taking place everywhere in many churches within the Lango,” he said.

Churches operating illegally in Lira city

He appealed to the Government and URSB to gather church leaders and preach the message of the need to register churches and places of worship.

“We need a lot of sensitisation for the registration body because we have to be law-abiding Christians or citizens of this country,” he added. 

He added that in Lango, they have over 2,000 churches most of which are not registered.

“Even within Lira city here, there are many of them which are not registered with the city authority and URSB. They are just there and not known to any authority,” he said.

Anganya said there is a need to teach people to register their marriages for the sake of having a stable family.

He added that the registered marriages and other due legal processes keep the families united both in the time of death and peace.