South Africa’s DIRCO Announces Plans to Charge Ghana and Other Foreign Nations for Deportation
- The Department of International Relations and Cooperation announced plans to charge countries for the deportation of their nationals
- Reports have indicated that South Africa deported more than 100,000 undocumented foreign nationals over the past two years
- DIRCO spokesperson Chrispin Phiri confirmed that the government would pursue billing for both deportation and criminal detention costs
The Department of International Relations and Cooperation (DIRCO) has announced plans to start charging countries for the deportation of their nationals who have violated South Africa’s immigration laws.
Source: Twitter
This financial strategy comes as several countries begin to repatriate their citizens amidst ongoing protests against undocumented foreign nationals within the country.
City authorities indicated that the high fiscal burden of enforcement prompted this new stance.
Over the past two years, South Africa has deported more than 100,000 undocumented foreign nationals.
This high volume of repatriations has incurred costs of millions of rands to the national fiscus.
Government officials noted that recent citizen extractions by foreign governments prove that these nations possess the necessary logistics to handle their people.
Read more about South Africa’s new deportation policy in the Facebook post below.
South Africa to bill foreign governments
DIRCO spokesperson Chrispin Phiri stated that the recent repatriations indicate that countries can bring back their own nationals.
The department plans to coordinate closely with immigration enforcement to systematically log and bill these expenses directly to the respective home countries.
“Moving forward, we will also be billing countries for their foreign nationals who have to be deported or who are in our criminal detention facilities and have to be deported back into their countries. At least now we can see that there’s capacity for countries to extract the foreign nationals who have fallen foul of the law. That’s something that through the department of home affairs we pursue as a government,” Phiri said.
Source: YEN.com.gh
