By Bida Elly David
Directorate for Immigration and Passports has rubbished claims of proliferation and trade of passports in black markets.
Over the weekend, an activist, Edmund Yakani slammed the directorate of migration for illegal sale of passport booklets to citizens in black markets while claiming a lack of the document in the office.
Yakani claimed that some officers were selling the passport booklets at $200 plus, in the black market.
He termed the illegal exercise a discriminatory act against the national constitution, which dictates any activity that threatens civil rights over nationalization or equal access to possessing a document to exercise their freedom of movement.
The activist called on the political leadership to take note of the act and end the malpractice in the sector.
However, Lt. Col Phillip Kuch Manyuon, an assistant finance and administration officer at the migration said that they have not by any means participated in illegal sale of passports for individual financial gain.
“The accusation was wrong since we don’t have passport booklets we sell on the black market,” Manyuon stated.
He explained that different passports are issued at the department, such as business passports charged $250, ordinary passport for an adult at $100 and $50 for a child while diplomatic passport costs $200.
Lt. Col. Manyuon links the misinformation and cheating, to accounts where some citizens, while processing passport, deal with crooks who are not part and partial of the migration office.
He added that the migration office has detected several illegal officers who on several occasions believe to have been employees of the institution but not true ones.
Lt. Col. Manyuon warned citizens against dealing with such kinds of people who cannot be trusted in service delivery, pronouncing that some officers from the organized forces struggling to survive.
“When you come to the Department of Immigration, be mindful to deal with the rightful people such as the authority having the right charges in place and on their tables,’’ he said.
“When people come to the migration, they find people loitering around our gate and these people presume that they are immigration officers, yet they are not our officers” Lt. Col. Manyuon alerts citizens.
These are criminals coming from different units of our organized forces to get something in their pockets, he added.
The officer underscored that there is no way for passports to get out of their warehouse without their consent since all booklets bear serial numbers that are difficult to be claimed by any citizen.
“Whoever paid a criminal on the street to process any passport will never receive another, because at the moment as we are speaking, the ordinary passport is completely out of our stock,’’ he said.
He slammed Edmund Yakani the Executive Director for Community Empowerment for Progress Origination (CEPO) for having made a statement against them without any genuine evidence.
Lt. Col. Manyuon acknowledged that Civil Society Organizations are representatives of the citizens but said Yakani violated Organizational ethics by speaking without accuracy and factual justification.
Meanwhile, Col Johny Baulo the director of moral orientation and information alluded that South Sudan ought to clear $1.7 Million to the German printing company for the booklets to arrive.
He said that as soon as government generates the money, it won’t take long for the booklets to be transported to the Country.