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Friday, October 21, 2005 - Web posted at 7:58:25 GMT Agent denies bribing passport officials * LINDSAY DENTLINGERAN agent handling passport applications says she does not consider taking 15 Home Affairs officials to Swakopmund for a weekend as bribery or corruption. |
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Anita Tjombe of Express Passport made this statement to a Parliamentary committee investigating operations at Home Affairs. Tjombe's agency has been handling applications for travel and immigration documents for nearly four years. She told the Parliamentary committee that she considered herself as "one of them" and denied ever bribing officials to speed up the processing of applications, or ever receiving any favours from them. Her employees, she said, stood in queues like everybody else to submit applications. "I just wanted to say thank you to them. Other agents also give them presents. I just thought I was doing something good. It was not that I wanted to get my work permits [quicker]," Tjombe naively told the hearing when questioned about the trip. "Do you know that public servants are not allowed to receive any gifts, not even lunch? To me this is corruption," said Auditor General Junias Kandjeke. But Tjombe said she didn't see it in this light and, to the dismay of the committee, said that she planned to take officials to the coast again this year. She admitted that she did not clear last year's trip with the Home Affairs Permanent Secretary, saying she didn't want officials to get into trouble for leaving work a little early on a Friday. Two weeks ago, other agents who appeared before the committee alleged that bribery was rife within Home Affairs and was the only way one could be certain to obtain a national document within a reasonable period. But Tjombe vehemently denied that this was the case, saying she believed the only pitfalls of the department was a lack of training to do the job well, and a lack of communication and customer care skills. She said she had always had a good working relationship with Home Affairs officials and never used this relationship to advance her applications. Tjombe told the committee that she was by nature a very pleasant person and she gave where she could. She asked the committee whether they considered it corruption that she gave a security guard who worked at Civic Affairs N$150 to allow him to travel to a funeral. Just this week, she wrote out a cash cheque of N$300 for another official who needed money, she said. Jeremiah Nambinga, a Swapo MP, was not convinced that Tjombe had never engaged in any "illegal activities" in her line of work. "You want to convince us that you are not involved in bribery? What motivated you [to take them to Swakopmund]? These are people who earn a salary," said Nambinga. "It is in my blood to be good to people. I will never get rich," she told the hearing, saying she was only helping people who she believed didn't earn very much. Tjombe insisted that she had never resorted to bribery to get her work done, and had only heard about such stories "on the street". She said most of her work was obtaining work visas and permits for highly qualified and skilled persons such as pilots, doctors and engineers, and acknowledged that there were long delays in getting these applications processed. This, she said, was because the committee that approved such applications hadn't sat for nine months of this year. They should sit once a week. Some months ago, she said, she knew that 3 000 applications for work visas and permits were waiting to be processed. She believed this number to be lower now. Tjombe also said she knew that the investment centre within the Ministry of Trade and Industry wielded more power than ordinary people and agents in getting their work permit applications processed first. She said applicants could wait up to three months to get a work permit that is valid for a year, and most choose to get a work visa first, which they could get within a week and is valid for three months. Her agency charged clients N$650 for a work visa, for which Home Affairs charged N$230, while her fee for getting a work permit was N$1 500 and the permit cost N$500, Tjombe said. This week, members of the parliamentary committee visited Home Affairs offices in the North to establish what problems were being experienced in speeding up the processing of national documents. A Home Affairs campaign to issue more than 80 000 identity documents kicks off countrywide on Monday. |
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