Immigration in multinationals illegal deals

The Immigration Department has signed with some multinationals deals that flout Malawi laws on the issuance of permits, Nation on Sunday has established.

In our continued investigations into what is leading to expatriates—some of them under-qualified—flooding the Malawi job market, we established last week that the department has signed some Memoranda of Understanding (MoUs) that have resulted in authorities cutting corners to issue temporary employment permits (TEPs), visas and temporary residence permits (TRPs) without following legally binding processes.

So far, we have established that the Immigration Department has separate MoUs with Vale Logistics Limited and Mota-Engil that, among other things, change the period within which Malawi’s laws and policies prescribe as duration for processing permits

The MoUs also ignore an important part of the country’s Immigration laws on permits—that “all applicants for new TEPs are required by law to wait outside Malawi until the application has been approved.”

While the Immigration Department defended the MoUs, saying the move was meant to remove hurdles in the permits processes, Minister of Home Affairs Uladi Mussa—under whose authority Immigration operates—last week said: “I am not aware of such MoUs and if indeed they exist, then it’s against our laws.”

“I haven’t heard anything of such MoUs and I don’t think they are provided for under the Immigration Act or policies that guide issuing of permits,” he said in an interview on Tuesday.

The discovery

Leading to the latest revelations on how the country has ended up allowing too many expatriates at the expense of local labour, is the continued row between local staff and Portuguese multinational Mota-Engil in Neno.

The row began when Mota-Engil imported hundreds of Thais to help them speed up the construction phase of the 138.5km new railway line from Mwanza to Mkaya.

Mota-Engil has been contracted to do the work on behalf of Brazilian multinational Vale Logistics, which has a 30-year concession with Malawi Government to run the railway line after construction.

The concession, signed in December 2011, is renewable for a further 20 years.

In an interview mid last week, Mota-Engil circumvented the questions about the MoU on permits, including whether the Thais benefited from the same.

In an e-mail response, Mota-Engil construction manager Carlos Campos only said: “We have no problems with [any] of the authorities in Malawi. In fact, they are very supportive of all our activities since 1990 when we started construction of Dwangwa-Nkhata Bay project. Therefore, concerning Vale, I would recommend that you contact them.”

Immigration spokesperson Martha Sanyala-Gonondo confirmed that the department has an MoU with Mota-Engil signed “to simplify certain processes of” TEPs, visas and TRPs of expatriates coming to work for the multinational company.

Sanyala-Gonondo claimed that no other company, apart from Mota-Engil, is having an MoU with the Immigration Department.

She could, however, not explain our discovery of a similar MoU the department signed with Vale Logistics in 2012, a discovery that may point to more of such deals.

We have established that the concessionaire, Vale Logistics, on April 26 2012 signed the agreement with Malawi Immigration.

Apart from Vale itself, another company called SRK is benefiting from Vale’s MoU with Immigration Department signed by former chief immigration officer Elvis Thodi on behalf of the department and Ricardo Saad, Vale director.

As is normally the case in construction projects, apart from Mota-Engil, Vale has also hired SRK as consulting engineers.

Whereas the Malawi policy demands that TEPs be processed and decisions communicated to the applicants organisation within 40 business days, the Vale agreement with Immigration varies this and sets the time frame as “no later than 10 days”.

The MoU reads in paragraph XVI: “Malawi Immigration will process and issue TEPs no later than 10 [ten] business days from the date a request is submitted.”

While the agreement acknowledges Malawi laws require TEP applicants to apply before coming to Malawi, the deal proceeds to bend the laws.

For example, the MoU says the Malawi Embassy in Mozambique and Brazil “shall be able to issue and process business visas no later than 5 [five] business days.”

Then it adds: “Expatriate workers whose stay in Malawi is shorter than 90 [ninety] days shall be allowed to work in Malawi with a TRP issued to them endorsed with a stamp ‘allowed to work’.”

Further, states the MoU, “expatriate workers who intend to stay and work in Malawi for more than 90 [ninety] days will be allowed to enter Malawi with a business visa before their respective TRP is issued.

“Expatriate workers without TRP will be able to attend trainings, inductions, meetings and organise personal matters such as housing, furnishings, etc. whilst their TRP is under process,” adds the MoU.

While the agreement says expatriates with TRP will not be allowed to hold a contract of employment or receive their salaries in local banks, it sets a leeway, saying “the passport stamp for the relevant TRP will state ‘multiple entry’ to allow expatriate workers to enter and exit Malawi as many times as needed.”

Immigration’s own website as read on Monday July 15 2013 also emphasises that “all applicants for new TEP are required by law to wait outside Malawi until the application has been approved.”

Consequences of bending laws

But during our search at the Immigration Department, we saw some 50 applications from SRK for their expatriates from South Africa—all of whom are already working in the country.

Their TEP requests were submitted to Immigration between February 27 and March 17 this year.

As of Wednesday, July 17 2013, the department had not issued these TEPs, but sources indicated a likelihood of their being processed.

Vale was yet to reply to our questions as of Friday July 19 2013.

But Mussa maintained that “as far as I am concerned, it’s only a committee on TEPs that I know and no further establishments beyond the law.”