Work Permits in Uganda

Well, we're legal again.  We've been assured by many people, including the guys at the immigration office that we won't be kicked out of Uganda for overstaying our original one-month tourist visa.  They say Americans don't get kicked out.  It's a nice sentiment, but I was still a bit nervous.  I know what they do in the USA if you overstay your visa!  So we've been trying to get our work permits here which would allow us to actually work through the year (the initial work permit is good for one year).  So when our tourist visa ran out we went to the immigration office to get an extension - which is what the immigration officer told us to do when we first arrived in Uganda.  But they didn't want to give us an extension (of course).  Nope, you can only apply for the "Special Pass" extension (which costs like $30 per passport) if you are simultaneously actually filing the work permit paperwork.  So until the work permit paperwork is all in place and ready you can't get the extension to stay in the country while you file for your work permit!  Didn't make much sense to me, but that's just my Western mind clouding up the issue. So, fine, we take our passports back home and wait until we have everything assembled.  We were waiting for our background check letters to come in the mail which they finally did.  Then, our wonderful President of the LCMU, Noah Isanga, helped us out with all the stuff the LCMU needed to contribute, like letters of invitation, NGO certificate, and cover letters for the filing. We finally had it all together.  Krista and President Noah go down to the immigration office to file our work permit.  They accept the whole package and give us a receipt and tell us to come back in a week or so.  "One week?" I thought, "This is going to be easier than I expected!" 

We went back today.  First, logically, we go to the window where we dropped off the work permit paperwork.  They hand us back our passports with a receipt.  Funny - the passports look exactly the same as they did when we turned them in last week.  We're directed to another window.  At this window, the guy takes our receipt and passports, writes another receipt in quadruplicate, stamps each copy, hands us three copies, and gives us our passports back.  I still have no idea what's going on - we don't have any work permits or special passes in our passports - they're exactly the same.  And we haven't paid any money yet but we have our passports back and a receipt in triplicate with a bunch of blank boxes on it.  Finally we figure it out.  We have to take this receipt downtown to the Uganda Revenue Authority which is the centralized location for collection of all official taxes, duties, fees, and fines (centralizing collection prevents corruption I think).  There we pay the fee for our special passes. 

Okay, so I find the Uganda Revenue Authority which is in the bottom of a regular ol' bank.  Stand in line...  Still standing...  Yup, still standing... Finally, I'm at the front.  Pay the $30 for each passport plus the "collection" fee.  She takes two (if I remember correctly) of my triplicate receipt, stamps them all in one of those empty boxes I saw earlier, and hands me back my original receipt - now with a new stamp on it.  Now I knew that I needed a different receipt to take back to the immigration office - it didn't look at all like the one I had in my hand.  So I asked her.  "Wait one hour," she says, "then stand in that line to get your receipt."  "Surely you jest," I thought.  "Why in the world do I have to wait an hour for you to give me a receipt?"  Well, I spent my hour (or most of it) at the post office - I'll write more about that later.  I return a little early to the Uganda Revenue Authority and since the "receipt" line was short I thought I'd try my luck and could always feign ignorance if I came before my hour was up.  I even checked where she had stamped my original receipt to see that she didn't write the time in the box.  So I get to the front of the "receipt" line (which is at a window with "RECEIPTS" written over it, of course) and I finally see why there's a separate line for receipts.  Behind the lady is a continuous-feed dot-matrix printer which is continously printing out receipts from all the other Uganda Revenue Authority windows.  I had to wait an hour because that's the estimate for how long it would take the print job my money-receiving lady sent to actually get through the printer and on to the receipt-giver's desk.  Sure enough, even though I was 10 minutes early, there was my receipt.  Yay!  It can't be long now, I thought! She gives me my receipt and stamps my original receipt in yet another previously-empty box.

My receipt - complete with 4 stamps.Back to the immigration office I go (almost 2 miles from the Uganda Revenue Authority), with two receipts in hand.  Now I go into yet another office to find out what I'm supposed to do with this receipt.  A man takes my receipt, stamps my original receipt in yet another box, takes our passports, and tells me to come back in three days to pick them up - they'll have our special passes in them then.  All that - and all I have to show for it at this point is a receipt with 4 stamps on it - and no passports.  I guess this is why they don't kick you out for overstaying your visa.  The percentage of time we've had our passports in our possession vs the percentage of time they've been at the immigration office makes it pretty clear that we're not likely to be stopped by the police and actually be able to present our passports.  The valid excuse can always be, "They're at immigration."  -Shauen

Update on Monday, March 16, 2009 at 4:49PM by Shauen & Krista

Well, Krista picked our passports up today.  This time they actually do look different.  The "Special Pass" form we filled out (1/2 of a sheet of paper) is stuck in the middle and a hand-written "extension" is written on one of the pages of the passport with a nice little immigration stamp.  They told her to come back at the end of April to check if our work permits have been processed.  I can hardly wait!  -Shauen

Update on Wednesday, May 20, 2009 at 4:20PM by Shauen & Krista

We're hosting a short-term missionary for about a week as he gets settled in and adjusted to Uganda time and culture.  So I decided to take him around on all of my errands - including checking on our work permits which should be done by now.  We drove over to the immigration office and confirmed that our work permits were, indeed complete.  The man at window #2 handed us the original applications complete with everything we had turned in.  Now there was a little itty-bitty sentence or two written on the inside of the cover of our application indicating that we were approved and a two-year permit was to be issued.  Yay!  We were told to take the applications over to the cashier.  I remember how this went last time, so I wasn't too optimistic that we would get our permits today.  Indeed, the cashier writes out another set of those triplicate receipts and hands us the yellow copies - just like last time - except that this time we get four receipts: one for me, one for Jacob, one for my wife, and one for his family.  Then its off to the Uganda Revenue Authority again to pay after a quick stop at the bank first to get the necessary funds.  We finally get to the Uganda Revenue Authority around 3:30 in the afternoon and the line is short, which is nice.  After paying, the man tells us the current wait for our receipt is 2 hours.  Two hours would take us well past 5pm, which I figure is closing time.  So after confirming that I could return the next day and pick up my receipt we left.  One stamp closer to filling our yellow receipts and getting our work permits!

Update on Thursday, May 21, 2009 at 4:27PM by Shauen & Krista

Today we went back to the Uganda Revenue Authority to pick up our receipts.  It's no small task, although picking up the receipt itself takes only a few seconds.  Parking in downtown Kampala is quite hectic.  Since I can count on one hand the number of times I've successfully parked on the curb, I don't even try - instead I drive up to the Grand Imperial Hotel and park there, which is usually fairly hassle-free even though you're only supposed to park there if you're a guest of the hotel.  Wouldn't you know it this is the one time the gentleman at the gate gives me a bunch of grief about how he has 120 guests coming for lunch and he can't just let me park there if I'm not a hotel guest.  The parking lot was, of course, empty.  He wanted to know exactly where we were going and when I told him we were going to the Diamond Trust Bank and the Uganda Revenue Authority he really, really didn't want to let me park there - such a task could easily be a 3 hour ordeal.  Fortunately, someone else drove up to the gate at that moment and he had to go let them in so I walked away assuring him we would be right back.  Not the best approach but remarkably acceptable here as it maintains the relationship and reduces conflict.  There was almost no line at the receipt window at the Uganda Revenue Authority, so picking up my receipts was very easy.  Alec was amazed that we had come back a second day just to get a slip of paper but that it still took 1/2 an hour to park, walk the 5 or so blocks, and actually do it.  Sure enough, we were back at the Grand Imperial long before lunch time and the parking lot was still mostly empty.  The gate keeper who had hassled us so much didn't even make eye contact when we returned.  Off to the immigration office with 4 yellow stamped receipts and 4 printed Uganda Revenue Authority receipts! 

At the immigration office we arrived in the middle of lunch which runs from around 1pm to around 2pm.  So we went and ran another errand in the meantime and got back around 2:30.  This time the lady at counter #2 asked if we had made our photocopies of our receipts.  No, of course we hadn't - why would we make photocopies of the receipts?  Well, she wanted us to go make photocopies first and assured us that right across the courtyard we could have copies made.  So across the courtyard we go - the copier, of course, is "finished" which usually means broken.  So we couldn't get our copies made.  The lady at window #2 insists that we need photocopies and she won't take our receipts and passports unless we have photocopies - "for accountability" she says.  I ask what the next step will be once we do have our photocopies.  Apparently it's going to be as easy as dropping off our passports and the receipts and returning in one week to pick them up with our issued work permits!  We're so close!