The Directorate of Civil Registry, Nationality, Passport, and Immigration has revealed that the authority will open a case against South Sudanese citizens who have been leaving their passports and National IDs at the border of Uganda.
This came after the immigration office in Juba received three hundred forty-two (342) passports and one hundred seventy-four (174) National IDs from the Chief of Immigration in Nimule last week.
Gen. Atem Marol Biar, Director at the Directorate of Civil Registry, Nationality, Passport, and Immigration states that after opening a case against those individuals, the office will also see if they will come for passport or ID.
“Number is we are going to open a case against them, the information office will register their names all then take one officer in the office of crime and control, go to the court and open a case against them.”
“The second thing is we will see if anyone come to get another passport again, we will block them. If anyone get another passport among those who left the document of South Sudan in Uganda, we will block them.”
Biar said the low cost of the documents means people do not take care of them because it is easy to get them replaced.
“Other reason which contributes to such practices is we purchase our passport form production at 19.5 dollars and we come to sell to our citizens at 6 dollars.
He says people took advantage that passport is very cheap instead of buying 50 dollar from there or 100, its better you leave passport, you come to juba and claim I lost my passport then you take another passport with 6 dollar which is a big loss to the government.
He urged the newly appointed ambassador to Uganda Simon Deng to work hard to stop such issues.
The Director General called on the people of South Sudan to take care of their citizenship documents.
It’s not clear why some people left their passports at the border since citizen of the East African Community Partner States (Burundi, Kenya, Rwanda, South Sudan, Tanzania and Uganda) does not require a visa to travel to or through East Africa.