GOVERNEMNT has approved 15 810 working visas to foreigners between January and August this year and issued 5 994 work permits, the Minister of Home Affairs and Immigrations said.
Responding to a query from CoD President Ben Ulenga in Parliament last Thursday, Minister Rosalia Nghidinwa said another 241 work permits were rejected and 2 231 were pending. In the category of working visas, 830 applications were still pending.In addition, 716 business visas were approved during the same period as well as 6 578 visas for students.Nghidinwa added that her ministry granted 167 temporary resident permits this year until August, while 115 more were pending.Approval for 58 permanent residence permits was granted, but another 37 were rejected.The Minister could, however, not answer how many visas and work permits were given to foreigners over the last ten years and five years, nor how many permanent residence permits for those periods.”All our records are manual ones and the storage and retrieval of data has been extremely cumbersome.It will require staff to go through them file by file and record the nationality of each person that has been given citizenship,” the Home Affairs Minister explained.”We have undertaken automation of all our records, starting with the permit system.We have budgeted for resources during the next financial year for the conversion of all manual records to be undertaken as a capital project,” Nghidinwa explained.In the category of working visas, 830 applications were still pending.In addition, 716 business visas were approved during the same period as well as 6 578 visas for students.Nghidinwa added that her ministry granted 167 temporary resident permits this year until August, while 115 more were pending.Approval for 58 permanent residence permits was granted, but another 37 were rejected.The Minister could, however, not answer how many visas and work permits were given to foreigners over the last ten years and five years, nor how many permanent residence permits for those periods.”All our records are manual ones and the storage and retrieval of data has been extremely cumbersome.It will require staff to go through them file by file and record the nationality of each person that has been given citizenship,” the Home Affairs Minister explained.”We have undertaken automation of all our records, starting with the permit system.We have budgeted for resources during the next financial year for the conversion of all manual records to be undertaken as a capital project,” Nghidinwa explained.
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