The Immigration Department has reiterated that it has the capacity to stand on its own to improve service delivery and generate more income for government.
Chief Immigration Officer, Masauko Medi, who disclosed that they are facing myriad challenges, said, currently, the department is in talks with the Treasury Department, so that they are allowed to run as a business entity.
Medi made the remarks on yesterday when the Egyptian Ambassador, Maher El-Adawy, visited the Immigration headquarters in Blantyre.
“We have the capacity to stand alone. Look at how much we have collected this financial year; we were only given K463 million, but we have collected over K6 billion. So if we are able to generate that amount of money from the little resources we have, then given more resources, we will generate more income for our government.
“Currently we are in liaison with our counterpart, the Treasury through our Ministry of Home Affairs and Internal Security in order to retain some portion of the revenue that we collect in order to be self reliant. But at the same time, as a department, we would want to function as a business, because the direction in which we [the country] are going I think there is a lot of donor fatigue and we have to depend on our own,” said Medi.
According to Medi, the department has several programmes like passports, business and work permits and visa platform that they would run in order to generate more revenue for the government.
“As a department we have several programmes that need finances and expansion like integrated border control. Currently, we have only computerised three borders out of 36 and these are here [Blantyre], Kamuzu and Chileka International Airport. You find out that computerising of these borders is not government’s priority, but it’s the priority of Immigration Department to manage,” he said.
The Chief Immigration Officer then asked the Egyptian Government to continue supporting the department after 10 immigration officers were trained in Egypt.
“We need a multipurpose built immigration headquarters in Lilongwe to relocate as a means of cutting costs. We know if we were given that opportunity to manage our own resources we could have done that within two to three years. There is only one vehicle servicing the whole Northern Region, and there are only 59 immigration houses against over 650 officers,” he said.
The Egyptian ambassador said he is impressed with the quality of services rendered at the department amidst huge challenges.
“My coming here was to praise the good job they are doing for the people of Malawi, but at the same time to strengthen the cooperation and see other areas that we can cooperate in the future. I am sure we’ll be doing more especially now with the issues of terrorism. These are issues across the board, there is need for cooperation between countries to fight terrorism,” said El Adawy.
Meanwhile, Ministry of Finance spokesperson, Nations Msowoya has confirmed that they are in discussion with the Immigration Department to ensure that the department runs efficiently.
Leave a Reply