Women cite incest as reason for leaving their children’s father details blank

The Directorate of Citizenship and Immigration Control (DCI) is finding it difficult to process passports for children borne out of incest after their mothers opted not to reveal details of the actual fathers.

The spokesperson for ministry of Internal Affairs, Simon Peter Mundeyi said they are stuck with over 5,000 passport applications which were filled with partial details. According to Mundeyi, most of these passports with missing details are for children borne out of incest or extramarital affairs.

“We have noticed that women come here to process passports for their children but leave the section for the father’s details blank. For us, we cannot process a passport with partial details. We need the full details for both parents,” Mundeyi said.

DCI has this year alone recorded 52 cases where women have indicated that the fathers of their children were their own relatives. The other is that some women have relationships with more than one man and cannot decisively conclude who is the exact father of their children while other women were left with fatherless children after several men subjected their children to DNA tests, especially this year.

Mundeyi also said that DCI has this year processed 320,000 passports for Ugandans. He added that DCI is also stuck with more than 40,000 unclaimed passports.

“People take time to fill in the online details for acquiring the passports, they pay money in the bank and also come here for physical interviews. Afterwards, they do not come to claim these passports. Our Kyambogo collection centre is full and we have nowhere to keep this huge number of unclaimed passports,” Mundeyi said.

Meanwhile, DCI has this year deported at least 323 illegal foreigners according to Mundeyi. These were mostly from Pakistan, India and Nigeria. 

The directorate is set to open up passport application and distribution centres in Jinja and Arua in 2024 to reduce the number of people travelling to Kampala.