Author: Atem (hatem_gil@yahoo.com)
South Sudan is on its way to recovery after the peace signed by the warring parties who have accepted to settle their animosities for the sake of the nation and its extremely exciting since peace has finally been given a chance . With that said , there is a question that need to be answered and addressed immediately .
It’s part of human nature to travel , that is to move from place to place . It has become a daily routine for hard-working citizens to travel from town to town ,city to city and country to country for various reasons for example, in search of education, healthcare, business opportunities and adventure among other things and with modernity and globalization, traveling has become inevitable and it cannot happen now if one lacks a passport especially in the twenty-first century.
I think South Sudan Department of Immigration and Passport if failing South Sudanese both in the country and the ones in the diaspora . It’s has become a tall order if you were to get a passport. It’s really frustrating, humiliating and embarrassing ; people have to wait for months, use a lot of money for transport and withstand unbearable heat not to mention the long queues to get both the passports and the national identification cards and I think it’s upon time the central government gets involved actively with what is happening at the Department of Immigration and Passport.
The other day I went to our embassy in Nairobi and I was told the computers that transfer passport and ids application information to the main server in Juba is not functioning. I was broken shocked and disappointed. Moreover, there were rumors that the government has not paid the German company Muhlbauer, an annual software license fee of around $500,000 which turned out to be true. Now, if the government of the Republic of South Sudan cannot perform basic tasks to its citizens such as providing passports and ids, how will it handle greater challenges facing the country such as education, healthcare, infrastructure, security, and electricity among others? How will that old lady suffering from trachoma go for treatment in India or Ethiopia without a passport? Or that smart student who has been offered a scholarship abroad or that tall skinny boy or girl who has also been awarded a scholarship to play professional basketball in Australia go without a passport?.
It’s time the workers at the department of immigration and Passport and the whole department style up their game and become serious because this passport thing is killing people’s dreams and denying plenty of people opportunities. Incompetence cannot be tolerated and those who are not doing their work should be replaced immediately with no hesitation. Time is of the essence here.
