Govt recovers 2,000 passports

The Ministry of Internal Affairs has revealed that it has recovered over 2,000 passports from labour export companies who had seized them from domestic workers when business failed. 

This followed an investigation, which was conducted last year by the Internal Affairs ministry. It was discovered that the labour export companies were illegally holding over 20,000 passports belonging to job seekers.

Speaking to this publication in an interview yesterday, Mr Simon Mundeyi, the Internal Affairs spokesperson, said these companies had closed business due to stringent government regulations on labour export.

“We have confiscated about 1,500 passports from labour export companies which they had previously processed to take girls abroad for domestic work but along the way, they failed to take them to the Middle East and kept these passports. The girls have been struggling to get back these passports in vain. We used other means to get them,” Mr Mundeyi said.

However, he also revealed that some of the companies decided to hand over the passports directly to girls when business failed.

Every year, about 80,000 young Ugandans, mainly women, flock to the Middle East countries such as the United Arab Emirates, Oman, Jordan and Saudi Arabia in search of jobs due to the unemployment rate in Uganda, according to the Gender ministry.

The Internal Affairs ministry also revealed that they are holding over 1,000 passports which were intercepted from victims of human trafficking.

“A total of 120 passports were abandoned at the airport during Covid-19 times. All Ugandans who were returning home were asked to leave their passports at the airport for the purpose of tracing the contacts and to access treatment. After healing, they were supposed to return and pick these passports, we don’t think these Ugandans are dead,” Mr Mundeyi said.

He added: “Also, 80 passports were sent to us by the Chinese Embassy after they were abandoned there. I don’t know what is wrong with some of our people. After struggling and paying to apply for visas at the embassy and the embassy goes ahead to process the visas, the passports are not picked up thereafter.”

According to Internal Affairs, the girls were being trafficked out of the country and were intercepted by our immigration officers at the airport who then confiscated their passports.

It’s from this background that the ministry has called upon those concerned to collect their passports at Internal Affairs headquarters.

“We are looking at the law and if after numerous reminder calls to pick them up falls on deaf ears, we may have to dispose them of in accordance with the government agreed disposal formalities,” he said.

[email protected]