The Immigration Department has expressed their dissatisfaction over what they called lack of funding from the Finance Ministry.
According to the correspondent unit officer at the immigration department in Freetown, Mustapha Swaray, it is not a secret that the immigration department lacks the resources to carry out their mandate properly as required by law, adding that the ministry of finance is responsible for the immigration to carry out its functions properly.
He maintained that as a government institution they got their revenue from the finance ministry to enable them dispense their work as per mandate, the Sierra Leone Immigration Department only has the mandate to generate revenue on the issuance of passport, visa and check on permits for foreign people in the country.
Mustapha Swaray furthered that the present status of the immigration department is nothing good to write home about, because the lack of the manpower and the financial resources from the finance ministry is giving them a setback in performing their duty. He noted that they have made several requests from the various offices, especially the finance ministry, and since 2021 to date there has been no reaction from them to get their subvention to recruit more staff.
Mr. Swaray named the former secretary to president Bio, vice president office, the transport minister and permanent secretary, the permanent secretary, ministry of internal affairs, from where they see no effort since 2021 when they started sending letters for funding to the immigration department, especially in the areas of human capital development and mobility is lacking.
He said they will need more vehicles to do their patrols especially at the porous borders, and disclosed that they charge a hundred United States dollars ($100).
He said the price for the passport varies according to the dollar price, and ended up saying they have the concern over the US dollar price for the passport but that they cannot go beyond the dollar ‘because the immigration department does not do the printing of the passport, which is done by Dalaru and international companies who use the US dollar in their printing business’.
