Governmet to cancel passports over fraud

The Directorate of Citizenship and Immigration Control (DCIC) in the Internal Affairs ministry has expressed concern over increasing cases of fraud in payment for passports and work permits.

Addressing journalists at the ministry headquarters in Kampala yesterday, the Director of Immigration, Maj Gen Apollo Kasiita, said they do not deal with agents in the process of acquiring travel documents.

“The public is, therefore, warned against seeking services from those unscrupulous individuals in the processing and payment of fees for our services,” he said.

Gen Kasiita also warned that under the Immigration Act, submitting forged documents to the Directorate is punishable.

“Any application found to be forged will be rejected. The applicant may, in addition, face more serious consequences that include a permanent record of fraud in our dataset, revocation of your resident or citizenship status, being charged in court or removal from Uganda, if you are a foreigner,” he added.

The warning follows the arrest of two suspects from Nasser Road in Kampala last week over forgery of documents.

The spokesperson of the Internal Affairs ministry, Mr Jacob Siminyu, said the suspects were found with, among others, forged seals and stamps for various ministries, departments, banks and universities; forged passports and visa stickers.

The arrest of the two brings to five the number of people so far arrested on suspicion of colluding with three Internal Affairs ministry employees to forge government documents.

“We are analysing our [records] to see whether there are any documents that were purportedly paid for whereas not,” Mr Siminyu said.

“Whoever we find [to have] used wrong documents to obtain any of our services, we shall cancel [it]. That is routine and is within the law,” he added.
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