There will be no foreigners with unconfirmed information by the end of their image and fingerprint collection and subsequent legalization process, said Minister of Homeland Security and Technology Ali Ihusan.
Speaking with press after commencing the ‘Kuran’gi’ campaign being run by Maldives Police Service (MPS) in collaboration with Maldives Immigration, the Minister said that the campaign will run in two phases and that it would be concluded within three years.
The goal is to only have foreigners with verified information in the country by the end of the campaign, he said.
Assuring the success of the efforts, the Minister said that foreign individuals with unverifiable information will be repatriated back to their country of origin. However, the focus right now is to gather background information and legalize the foreign nationals in the country, he stressed.
A similar campaign was also run by former President Ibrahim Mohamed Solih’s administration in 2019. With the aim of tackling the overwhelming number of undocumented migrants in the country, more than 40,000 migrants were registered in that project.
However, the administration was not able to fully resolve the issue, and the registration process also came to stop after some time.
Reflecting on this previous experience, Minister Ihsan said that foreigners living in local islands faced many issues getting themselves registered, as the registration process was taking place in the capital, Malé.
To resolve this, arrangements have been made for photographing and fingerprint collection to be made from local island councils. If the islands are classified as resorts or industrial islands, members of the campaign’s taskforce will travel to the islands.
From here on in, updating the information of foreigners living in the island will be the responsibility of the island councils, said Minister Ihsan.
“[…] the first year we’re going to check who is where and building their identity. The next two years [we will] work on sending back anyone who does not have official, verifiable documents who cannot be brought into the system. [We are] starting the work for a total of three years. The first phase is one year’s work,” he added.
Minister Ihsan explained the process in detail.
First, if the foreigner does not have any information, his photo and fingerprint will be collected. Then, any information available about the individual in the Maldivian systems will be retrieved. If information is not found, then information will be collected from the individual in question, and it would be cross checked and verified against information available from the respective embassy. If the identity and information of the individual is not verifiable through any of these means, then the individual will be deported from the country, he said.
“With the work being done, I have 100 percent faith [that we will succeed],” Minister Ihusan assured.
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