Parliament on Sunday decided to summon top officials from Maldives Immigration to appear before the Parliamentary Committee on National Security and Foreign Relations over two deportation cases.
Two Bangladeshi nationals, Shafiqul Islam and Abu Haneef were deported over alleged illegal recruitment and under suspicion of operating illegal businesses in the country. These two were deported after an operation into illegal immigrants conducted by Maldives Immigration.
Discussing these deportations, members of Parliament voiced their dissent stating that a proper investigation should have been undertaken before the seemingly impulsive decision to deport the two. Shafeeq is accused of being involved in a number of illegal recruitment of expatriates while Abu Haneef is allegedly linked to a number of illegal businesses in the country, having assisted in money laundering activities as well.
Member for Villimale' Constituency, Ahmed Usham called on the Committee to impose penalties as required, on the government institution should they be found at fault.
Supporting his colleague's motion to summon Immigration Officials, the MP for Inguraidhoo Constituency, Hassan Ahmed stated that the immigration officials should be summoned to the Parliamentary Committee regarding their conduct over the deportations rather than corresponding through letters. Further, the Committee approved his motion by unanimous vote.
Illegal immigration into the country and cases related to human trafficking has been the talk of the decade as past administrations, one after the other, fell short to effectively deal with this issue. Maldives has been on the Human Trafficking Watch-list of the State Department of the United States of America for a considerable period of time.
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