ACB raids Immigration, arrests 6
The Anti-Corruption Bureau (ACB) has arrested four Immigration officers and two civilians for alleged corrupt practices in the processing of passports at the Department of Immigration and Citizenship Services in Lilongwe.
In an interview yesterday, ACB acting director general Hilary Chilomba said one of the suspects is an Inspector at the Immigration office.
He said investigations were still in progress.
Said Chilomba: “What we will get from investigations will give us leads, who are involved, who are the people because as I said earlier on I don’t expect civilian, any outsider, coming into this place and almost occupying all the offices.”
A statement issued by the ACB yesterday identified the arrested Immigration officials as Madalitso Nanthulu, Wilson Tepeka, Kondwani Banda and Pearson Msiwa while the non-staff members are Agnes Master and Pauline Kampala.
Reads the statement in part: “Investigations on these matters are on-going as the bureau continues to review and analyse information gathered during the undercover operation.
“The bureau is calling on all public officers to desist from demanding extra payment from members of the public for services which are supposed to be paid for or offered for free.”
Chilomba said the bureau worked with the Malawi Police Service and raided the Lilongwe Immigration offices on Wednesday afternoon to establish alleged corrupt practices.
The raid comes amid reports that some applicants were paying over K200 000 on top of the official K50 000 fee to access the passport.
The ACB head said some of the suspects were found with huge sums of money during the raid.
He said: “One of the suspects had K2.1 million, some officers had K950 000 others K650 000 which they could not account for. One of them said he was a treasurer at his church and he was keeping the money for his pastor, but when we called the pastor, the pastor said he was a secretary.”
Meanwhile, the Parliamentary Committee on Defence yesterday visited the Lilongwe Immigration offices to appreciate challenges that people were facing and discuss the malpractices that include corruption.
Committee chairperson Salim Bagus said Malawians are struggling to access passports despite government reducing the fee to K50 000.
He said: “People are paying up to K300 000 to access passports. Why is the Immigration Office tolerating middlemen in the issuing of passports?”
Department of Immigration and Citizenship Services commissioner for operations Fletcher Nyirenda confirmed the arrests, but declined to comment further.
However he conceded that the Immigration as a security organisation did not do well in handling some issues that forced the ACB to raid the offices.
From January this year when the passport issuance system was hacked, Malawians have been facing challenges to get passports which are only being printed in Lilongwe. Minister of Homeland Security Ken Zikhale Ng’oma earlier indicated there was a backlog of 35 000 passport applications against a printing capacity of 500 a day.
