The Ministry of Internal Affairs has said that Ugandans traveling to Denmark with the new polycarbonate e-passport will have to wait or cancel their flights as they wait for verification of their passports by the destination country.
The spokesperson of the Ministry Mr Simon Mundeyi told journalists yesterday. He added that those intending to travel to the European country will have to wait for at least two weeks.
This is in order for their travel plans to be approved after recent reports indicated that Ugandan students had been blocked from proceeding with the visa application process to Denmark.
“Ugandans traveling to Denmark will have to be patient for two weeks as we finalize with the Danish authorities. Even those who had applied for visas at the Danish Embassy will have to wait for authorization from Denmark,”Mr Mundeyi revealed on Tuesday evening.
He added that those who had managed to travel to Denmark with polycarbonate passports without any issues are at liberty to return to the country but it is only those traveling out of Uganda that have to wait.
Uganda introduced the new polycarbonate e-passports in April this year. This is in a bid to ease travelers’ experience, improve document verification and enhance travel security for citizens.
According to Mr Mundeyi, the government had fulfilled all the standards required by International Civil Aviation Organizations (ICAO) for the new passports. These have not been rejected anywhere as some reports claim.
Reports from the Directorate of Citizenship and Immigration Control (DCIC) indicate that over 7,000 people had traveled abroad using the new polycarbonate passport. Out of these, 98 had managed to travel to Denmark.
“At the airport when we checked our records on Friday. About 98 have actually used the passports to go Denmark. However, the Danish government rejected one of the visa applicants on account of having not verified the passport,”he said.
However, it should be noted that a similar issue happened in 2018. This was when the government phased out the machine-readable passport to the electronic one. Mr Mundeyi said that the Danish government is always careful when verifying passports.
