Corruption drags immigration service delivery

Gothataone Moeng | Friday July 11, 2014 14:31

Pule said yesterday that his department has received reports of ‘corruption tendencies’ amongst his officers, who receive bribes from applicants to expedite their applications.

He said the delays in issuing of visas and permits contribute to officers being open to bribes, while corruption in officers can also lead to delayed turnaround times.

“If you delay services, you are inviting bribes.  This worries us everyday.  That’s why we want to improve services, so members of the public can refrain from bribing our officers,” he said.

Pule was speaking during a panel discussion at an Immigration Breakfast Seminar, hosted by Ernst & Young for the business community to get clarity on issues of work and residence permits. 

Other challenges that drag the execution of the department’s mandate are problems of understaffing and the periodical system breakdown, Pule said.

In his presentation prior to the panel discussion, Pule said that his department had rolled out a numbers of reforms to improve the quality of their service. 

The reforms include increasing the number of immigration attachés and rolling out of electronic systems to missions abroad.

“We have newly appointed attachés in China, Australia and India.  And in Africa we have attachés in South Africa, Zambia, Zimbabwe, Nigeria, Nambia and Ethiopia.  All missions except a few which have connectivity problems have been connected.  Plans are to have more with funds permitting,” he said.

He said the department is also training immigration officers, especially those at ports on entries on customer care and protection.

Further, Pule said the department improved their regime, with the introduction of new visas in 2013 with a view to promote doing business in Botswana, including the facilitation of easier travel for diamond purchasers.

Speaking to Mmegi on the sidelines of the seminar, Bakani Ndwapi, Managing Partner at Ernst & Young said they were motivated to organise such a workshop for the business community because there was a lot of confusion on the clear requirement for acquiring work and residence visas and permits for their clients.

“We wanted to bring the director and his team to come and tell people what the law says.  We realised there is a gap between what the law says and the experiences of people on the group.  That gap can be bridged by the director getting feedback from people here,” Ndwapi said.

He said it was important to look at the requirements of the law and the cost to business, particularly as it pertains to attracting foreign investors.

“Immigration is an important component in the FDI process.  On the one hand you are calling for FDI, and on the other you are making it difficult for people to get here.  If we are going to attract FDI, we need to make the immigration process easier without opening ourselves to security lapses,” he said.