Record passport, visa revenue

Shirajiv SIRIMANE

The revenue of the Department of Immigration and Emigration has increased by a record amount of over 178 million last year.

The department’s total revenue for 2008 was Rs. 3,698,522,201 while in the previous year they were able to collect only Rs. 3,519,624,717. Controller of the Department, P. B. Abeykoon said that the main revenue was generated from the issue of passports that amounted to Rs. 1,960,932,311.

He said that the main office in Punchi Borella is now being refurbished to provide a better service to the public and they are now in the process of computerising all applicants’ data.

“We have over 10 million files that are stored in a separate floor and the Department has received grant of Rs. 10 million from the International Organization of Asian Migrants (IOAM) to automate them,” he said.

The department hopes to complete this process by the end of the year. Their objective is to be the best immigration department in the region. Since independence, Chinese nationals who were in Sri Lanka have been requesting them to be granted citizenship and successive governments have ignored this request. Some of these nationals were holding top positions in society but were faced with severe hardships.

There was one incident where a child was deprived of a passport to proceed on a scholarship because of citizenship problem.

“However now the government has passed a special bill in parliament to grant them permanent residency, they are now grateful to the government for settling this issue.”

He said that in addition to the main office in Colombo they have their provincial offices in Anuradhapura, Matara and Kandy that offer the same service excluding the issue of one-day passports. The department is continuing with the issue of Emergency Certificates, valid for India and Nepal for Buddhist pilgrims and also for Saudi Arabia for Haj and Umrah pilgrimages. This is in addition to issuing ordinary passports valid for specified countries including the Middle East. Identity Certificates valid for All Countries are issued to a person resident in Sri Lanka, whose Nationality is not established while Non Machine Readable Passports, are issued by Sri Lanka missions abroad under special circumstances. The main service of the department includes issuing of Diplomatic Passports, Official Passports and Ordinary Passports valid for All Countries.