By William Madouk
Immigration Department announced it has cleared passport arrears worth 1.74 million US dollars with Germany’s Mauhlbauer firm, news that was greeted with smiles from applicants.
Addressing a crowd on Monday, Lt-Gen. Atem Marol, the director general for the Directorate of Civil Registry, Nationality, Passport, and Immigration, assured that passport challenges are now over.
“We will have a period of one year, and South Sudan will not have passport issues again because the problem we have is the issue of payment,” Marol said.
“In the first contract, we have paid all the money, and in the second contract, we will see the modalities,” he added.
Mr. Marol said he would not stand aloof but would rather engage the revenue authority and ministry of finance to find out how suppliers’ money is settled on time to avoid any further setbacks.
The directorate of immigration has also printed 496 passports ready for grabs.
“I want to promise you that the passports [booklets] have arrived, more will come, and they will continue coming,” he guaranteed.
The boss of immigration warned that nobody should collect somebody’s documents, and if at all the owner of the papers is far away, then an authorization letter must be obtained before those documents are given.
He also called on students to process their immigration documents earlier, even before they sit for senior four exams, to avoid delays when they get scholarships.
“Most of the students sat in senior 4 and when they were given scholarships; that is a time they wanted to process their passports. Not knowing that you come at a time when booklets are stock-out,”
General Marol claimed that in some countries, processing papers could take almost 3 months after procedures are completed, adding that for them, passports were issued within 72 hours.
The Immigration Director General also slammed senior government officials who hold papers in their pockets without checking the expiration date until they are stopped at the airport over invalid passports.
“He will run to us here at immigration, saying my passport expired and I want to travel now. This issue is common among VIPs; they don’t check their passports,” he continued.
By law, Marol said passports are supposed to be renewed six months prior to the actual expiration date of a document.
According to him, some countries ban those who have passports with 6-month duration.
South Sudan halted the issuance of the Nationality Certificate Identification Card and passport in 2020 after its German Technology provider shut down the system over failure to pay an accumulative bill of USD 6.9 million.
The government resumed the issuance of regular passports and nationality IDs on November 20, 2021, after the Ministry of Finance paid USD 3.4 million to the Company.
On April 21, the German firm temporarily stopped providing the country with booklets after the government failed to clear its balance. Out of USD 6.9 million, the remaining balance was 1.74 million US dollars.
That placed the immigration department between a rock and a hard place as regular passport booklets were stockpiled due to Mauhlbauer’s refusal to send booklets until all arrears were cleared by the government.