Why take only two months to process express passport?

What you need to know:

  • Promotions: As Okwi, Kigozi and Balintuma complain about Bainababo, Mugisha and Nabimanya getting promotions, there are others who can’t stand the constipated system at Immigration and are whining over merely waiting for two weeks for an interview and another six weeks for their express passport.

I woke up for my Suhur (the morning meal eaten by Muslims before the sun has come up during Ramadan) on Thursday morning to find every Tom, Okumu and Nsubuga breathing out enough dust particles to repulse Russian missiles targeting the Ukrainian strategic city of Mariupol. 
I hear the ‘janglo’ king had promoted Bainababo, Mugisha and Nabimanya to top ranks in the national army and they were not impressed.
So I tried to look up on these promoted officers to understand why Draku and Masaba were venting and lo! Anyway, I won’t say much of what hit me in the central processing unit (CPU) because there is a General who has abandoned his tweeting pastime and might be idle enough to use me for a point-blank target practice.
In fact, after Googling and realising how charitable the promotion is for the interest of Ugandans (pun is mine), I forgot all about my predicament with some service providers. It was only after my CPU had stopped overheating that I realised that the problems I had before jumping into matters of Generals were still there.
One day, I met an elderly man called Idiro in Luuka. Idiro was busy chasing after his NSSF savings. I tried to explain that he had a good source of revenue in his acres of sugarcane plantations and should leave the savings for his children’s future but he said Bbe!
Only recently have I found out Idiro’s concerns. When you die, the chaps at NSSF make it such a great experience for your kin to access the savings. 
“The process is so swift you would give up on your own after several months of running around,” a friend chasing the dimes left in NSSF by his father said with such mock seriousness I thought he had just been in a meeting with Satan. So Idiro’s science was simple: get your money before you expire or your kin will expire while chasing that same money.
But you can forget NSSF. One day, I walked into Face Technologies, that company that used to process and issue driving permits on behalf of Kaguta’s government. To my embarrassment, those chaps decided to do everything within just two days.
This was pleasantly puzzling so I tried to find out, kumbe this was a South African firm. 
Then days later, I walked into Immigration offices on Jinja Road and applied for an express passport. After one thing and the other, I paid some money in a bank on Parliament Avenue and the next day or so I had my passport.
Apparently, someone somewhere in government found out that Face Technology was doing things in a way that annoyed many Ugandans. It was booted out of service. Next this chap or chaps found out that it was possible to process and be issued with an express passport within 48 hours.
This is so un-Ugandan. A typical Ugandan is weaned on running around for service delivery until they curse their own existence. You don’t just get anything going normally in Uganda’s constipated system. 
Our constipated system is like when you eat sorghum bread for the first time and you have to use the toilet. You will sit or squat in all manners of acrobatics and groan in languages you don’t speak while swearing to never eat sorghum again.
The pain!
Yes, that constipation pain of applying for an express passport and paying Shs400,000, only to be given an interview appointment after three weeks. Basically, after paying Shs400,000, your so-called urgent passport is given to you after six weeks or two months.
As Okwi, Kigozi and Balintuma complain about Bainababo, Mugisha and Nabimanya getting promotions, there are others who can’t stand the constipated system at Immigration and are whining over merely waiting for two weeks for an interview and another six weeks for their express passport. 
You guys wait when the guy in government who is in charge of causing such delays decides to tamper with the reproductive system of our wives… you will complain properly when pregnancy in Uganda begins to last three years. I hope the person who does this is not reading this and picking weird ideas!