Last week, the lawyers of self-exiled writer Kakwenza Rukirabashaijja petitioned the Uganda Human Rights Commission accusing the Directorate of Citizenship and immigration control of refusing to issue passports to their client’s children despite fulfilling the requisite requirements, an allegation which the directorate refuted.
While commenting on the issue of Kakwenza ‘s children, the Public Relations officer of Immigration Simon Peter Mundeyi said that they never involve politics in their work and the passports of the author’s children are ready
“On the issue of Kakwenza’s children , these children are Ugandans and they applied for passports in March. However, what happened was that during that time, we were doing a system upgrade and cut the production of passports by 60% . This process ended 2-3 weeks back and we started clearing the backlog,” said Mundeyi before adding that the passports are ready.
He further stated, “The children’s passports are now ready for pickup in Kyambogo. We don’t involve politics in our work at the passport office. I want to make that very clear.”
Mundeyi’s clarification comes a day after kakwenza took it to his twitter to respond to Daily Monitor that had published that his children’s passports were ready for collection.
“Daily Monitor your paper is being used to spread lies about my children. You’re helping immigration crooks to sanitise themselves. No one from there has communicated to me or my lawyer about this issue so it is just a PR rumpus and brouhaha,” he stated.
Kakwenza flee the country early this year after a magistrate denied his application to have his passport returned in order for him to seek treatment abroad.
He is accused of using social media to insult President Museveni and the first son,the commander of the Land Forces of the Uganda People’s Defence Forces, Lt. gen. Muhoozi Kainerugaba.