By Sulaiman Jalloh
Hon. Alusine Kanneh, the Chief Immigration Officer (CIO) of Sierra Leone Immigration Department has expressed his intention to decentralize the issuance of passport to citizens across the country.
He disclosed that the passport decentralization process will include Sierra Leoneans living in the diaspora as there will be registration centers in the United States and United Kingdom for passport application, saying such development will address or reduce proxy application for passports. He added that application processes will also be done through digital means in order to ease the current complex process within the immigration service.
Hon. Kanneh noted that, to ensure proper scrutiny before, during and after the application process, applicants will be duly interviewed to ensure that the country’s passport is not given to ineligible persons.
“Foreigners living in Sierra Leone who want our passport would no longer be allowed to apply remotely for passport without having their biometric captured” the immigration boss said, adding they have upgraded the passport application forms to include National Identity Number (NIN), something he said is to enhance the security features and to ensure only citizens get passport, not foreigners.
“Foreigners don’t want to do biometric registration at the immigration department they sit at their convenience wanting to process their passports. Applicants can’t do their application process if they don’t have the National Identification Number (NIN),” Hon. Alpha Kanneh stressed.
Speaking on passport cost, the Chief Immigration Officer mentioned that two thousand three hundred Leones (NLe2, 300) is the official price for the passport, noting his institution is working to improve and make the process better and safer for citizens. He advised that people should not pay any exorbitant amount order than official price.
Addressing journalists during the government weekly press briefing on Tuesday, March 5, 2024 at the Ministry of foreign Affairs and International Cooperation conference hall in Freetown, he recalled the way he met the Immigration Department, noting there were overcrowding and difficulties of passport registration, saying it was caused by poor accommodation and unauthorized volunteers whose work he described ‘unscrupulous activities’.
“When I took over the immigration department, there was a problem of overcrowding, mostly caused by poor accommodation and unauthorized volunteers who were engaged in unscrupulous activities,” the CIO explained. He said he directed that they leave and that they have left the department. He stressed that the volunteers were soliciting money from passport applicants but could not do the necessary job.
According to Hon. Kanneh, Sierra Leone has about eight hundred border crossing points across the country and that they are working assiduously to tighten those crossing points to ensure proper monitoring on people entering and leaving the country, adding that they work with the International Organization for Migration (IOM) and INTERPOL to address issues relating to illegal migration.
Copyright –Published in Expo Times News on Monday, March 11th, 2024 (ExpoTimes News – Expo Media Group (expomediasl.com)
