The government through the Directorate of Citizenship and Immigration has set a deadline when all old passports should be phased-out and replaced by the East African new e-document. Effective January 2021, Ugandan will only be able to use the new documents. This only gives Ugandans only one year to comply to the new deadline.
Issuance of the International EAC e-Passport was commenced on 7th December, 2018. However, full commissioning of the centralized Passport system never took place until end of January 2019 when the entire system was fully operationalized. The e-Passport enrollment and delivery system was also rolled out to local regional centers and Uganda Missions abroad. The new documents have enhanced security features –embedded with a chip to store the holder’s biometric information.
To get yourself a shiny new document you will have to adhere to the fees structure below:
- Ordinary (48 Pages) – UGX 250,000
- Service (64 Pages) – UGX 400,000
- Diplomatic (64 Pages) – UGX 500,000
- Express Processing Service – UGX 150,000
- Courier service for Applicants Abroad -UGX 10,000
- Certification of Passport UGX -30,000
- Fine for Replacement of lost or damaged Passport -UGX 100,000
Brig. Johnson Namanya while appearing before the the Parliament’s Defense Committee revealed that only 188,200 e-passports have been issued as of Monday and the 64 page Diplomatic document issuance started on May 9th 2019.
They also plan to go to cities like London, Washington, Pretoria, Copenhagen, Ottawa, Abu-Dhabi and Beijing and start issuing electronic passports to Ugandan abroad.
During the transitional period all citizens with valid Machine-Readable document will continue to use them for international travel until January 2021. For the avoidance of doubt, after the end of January 2021, only the International e-Passport will be valid for International travel.
