Africa-Press – Uganda. Ministry of Works and Transport yesterday asked essential workers, who were issued electronic permits to move during the lockdown, to renew them before Thursday as the permits expired yesterday.
Addressing journalists at Uganda Media Centre, the ministry’s principal communications officer, Ms Susan Kataike, said they received applications from 50,000 people, out of which 24,909 were approved, 404 rejected and 5,834 are still pending.
“The ministry approved permits of most essential workers on June 22 and this means that their permits expired today [yesterday],” Ms Kataike said. She added that health workers do not have to renew their permits because they will expire after the 42 days of lockdown.
Ms Kataike also warned companies that applied for permits for non-essential workers like board chairpersons, saying their permits would be revoked.“We all know that board chair members do not go to office on a daily basis so they do not need permits. We started reviewing the status of people, who applied and those who are not supposed to be at office will have their permits revoked,” she said.
Ms Kataike also said government cars are not supposed to be on the road unless they have permits.
She said some officials have been using government cars to ferry relatives, insisting that they were cleared by the ministry.On whether one is allowed to move to pick a relative from the airport, Ms Kataike said they just need photocopies of travel documents of their relatives.
On June 18, President Museveni instituted a 42-day nationwide lockdown following the surge of Covid-19 cases in the country.
The President also set a number of restrictions including the banning of both private and public vehicles from the roads.
Only essential workers were allowed to move and these include the media, health workers, construction companies, and retail shops, .They were instructed to get travel permits from the Ministry of Transport.
Permits…How to renew
On the date of expiry of the permit, the organisation administrator, who handled the registration of the staff members, login in and click the application number of their organisation.
The Ministry of Works and Transport system will check the status of every individual application status and dates of approval and will automatically renew the application of every individual whose status is cleared.
Those who were rejected or pending approval will be ignored.
Depending on when they were approved, the expiry dates of permits of staff of the same company may differ.
