By Hassan Osman Kargbo
In a press briefing of the Ministry of Information and Civic Education held at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and International Cooperation on 5th March 2024, the Chief Immigration Officer Hon. Alusine Kanneh has informed news men that the Immigration Department is not only meant to process passport for the people of the country. According to Hon. Alusine Kanneh, Immigration Department is not only meant to produce passports for the public but also they focused on the issues of the borders crossing points in the country.
‘We have more than 800 borders in the country and we really need to man those borders very well so that people should stop moving in and out of the country freely. Some people are moving in and out of the country because they have engaged in some criminal activities and we need to stop that,’ he said.
He furthered that to maintain the standards of the country’s borders he had engaged the IOM to see how they could improve on the borders issues in the country. He noted that because of their quick response in the borders crossing points they could now know the full details of people that are crossing the country’s border because he said there are some bad peoples that are coming in and going out of the country so they had tried to get full details of people that are using the country’s borders.
According to him, why they are putting strategies in place to secure the borders is simply because some people are running out of the country for a reason, and they need to stop illegal movement in Sierra Leone. Mr Kanneh confirmed that he had a system in his office that could track peoples that are using the borders crossing points in the country and said they have tightening the borders and it not a business as usually any more in Sierra Leone.
He mentioned that the International Cooperation’s are very important in building strong borders in the country, adding that when he went to Belgium and signed MOU with the Belgium government and part of the MoU is to train some of his staffs on borders related activities and he said he had also engaged with the Foreign Affairs as to how they could strengthening the borders crossing points.
He however noted that they have made passports accessible for everyone and he said people could no longer move to Freetown for passports because people could now stay in the province and applied for their passports without coming to Freetown. He called on everyone to work with the Immigration so that Sierra Leone would be a better place for everyone.
