The Directorate of Civil Registry, Nationality, Passport, and Immigration said it has received 9,500 passport booklets and encouraged citizens to apply for new and or renew their passports.
Addressing a press conference in Juba on Friday, Gen. Atem Marol Biar, the Director General at the Directorate of Civil Registry, Nationality, Passport, and Immigration, said the issuance of passports has now been simplified to serve the public better.
“All these passports used to be brought to me for signing and approval but I canceled that and gave a directive to the director of the passports to print them as usual because the number is big,” he explained. “I used to control them when the number was minimal so this is where I used to give priority, especially to people who are sick and people who are going to school.”
Gen. Marol revealed that rural South Sudanese lack awareness about the importance of having a nationality identity card and he called on them to process their documents.
“Our people are not well informed and you know the big population is in the rural areas. The people in Juba are the ones applying for the nationality Identity card,” he explained. “They are the ones who know the meaning of the document but the people who are there in the cattle camps, in the rest of the places do not know these things so we need to reach out to the cattle camps and other areas.”
He said the directorate processed and has 60,000 national identity cards whose owners have not collected them since last year.
“Last year when I came, I printed everything which was actually in the system. We now have 60,000 Jinisia (national identity cards) and the owners have not collected them,” Gen. Marol said. “Where do you get these people who are complaining and are not picking up their documents? Let them come and collect their documents.”
South Sudan joined the rest of the world to commemorate International Identity Day on 16th September, a day set by the UN Sustainable Development Goal which calls for the provision of legal identity for all by 2030, including birth registration.
Source: Radio Tamazuj