The Ministry of Internal Affairs Tuesday said it recovered over 2,000 passports from labour export companies who had seized them from domestic workers but later closed business.
The Spokesperson of the Ministry, Mr Simon Peter Mundeyi said the affected companies had closed business due to stringent government regulations on labour export. However, he also revealed that some of the companies decided to hand over the passports directly to girls when the business failed.
“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,” Mr Mundeyi said.
“The girls have been struggling to get back these passports in vain. We used other means to get them.”
According to Mundeyi, “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 accessing treatment.”
“After healing, they were supposed to return and pick these passports, we don’t think these Ugandans are dead,” He added.
The Ministry of Internal Affairs also revealed a total of 80 passports were sent to us by the Chinese Embassy after they were abandoned there.
“..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,” he said, before calling upon those concerned to collect their passports at Internal Affairs headquarters.
Last year, the Ministry conducted an investigation where it discovered that these labour export companies were illegally holding over 20,000 passports belonging to job seekers.
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