By William Madouk
Director of Directorate of Civil Registry, Nationality, Passport, and Immigration, Maj. Gen. Simon Majur has called on citizens seeking passports and nationality IDs to be patient as the agency works to resolve a printer breakdown that has caused delays.
Maj. Gen. Majur acknowledged the inconvenience caused by the breakdown, which has resulted in a backlog of applications.
He assured the public that the issue will be addressed within a couple of days.
“I know majority of our citizens or our people in the country are looking for passport and national identity regardless of the time for travelling, studies and medical treatment outside the country,” he said.
“But for some reason, we are going to apologies to the public from not informing them earlier although the issue of the system will be addressed within a couple of days,” he added.
No.1 Citizen Daily Newspaper has established that the immigration department has been experiencing a system outage for more than a week, leading to a rise in the backlog of applications.
Gen. Majur explained that the system shutdown occurred last Monday, and prior to that, the department had been facing a shortage of passport booklets to meet the demand.
He noted that passports need to be renewed every ten years.
To provide a temporary solution, Maj. Gen. Majur advised South Sudanese travelling to East African countries to use travel documents that are valid for a stay of up to three months, which can be obtained at the airport, the Kololo office, or the Nimule border crossing.
He assured applicants that they would be informed when the system is fully restored, and they could then come to collect their documents.
“Simply because our system is down, we have to ask our partner to come and restore the system, and I am sure within a couple of days, our system will be back, and whoever needs a passport and nationality will get their documents,” Gen. Majur said.
The immigration department officials keep informing and inconveniencing applicants who have applied for travel documents that the printer has broken down, and they must wait longer to receive their documents.
Gen. Majur stated that all applicants will be informed when the system is fully restored so they can come to pick up their documents.