Department of Immigration and Emigration | Republic of Maldives

Deputy Controller Abdulla Waheed took part in a regional seminar held in Dhaka on the 27th and 28th of January 2010.

Organized by the International Organization for Migration (IOM), the seminar stressed the need for expanding the scope of definition of trafficked persons in the SAARC convention. It identified that the "SAARC Convention on Preventing and Combating Trafficking in Women and Children for Prostitution" did not include male as trafficked persons. Hence, the participants proposed that the SAARC Convention on Trafficking be revised to make it an effective instrument for combating trafficking in persons in the region, and agreed that the scope of the convention needs to be expanded to include trafficking of men and trafficking for other exploitative purposes, such as forced labour or labour trafficking.

As we set forth into a world of increased travelling and radical changes, the need to defend against one of the principal security challenges: fraud, is of main necessities. In order to provide with a more flexible and safe travelling experience, visas, which is the main indication that a person is authorized to enter the country which “issued” the visa, requires high level of security.

Hence, the department of Immigration and Emigration is proud to announce the inauguration of the all-purpose visa sticker which would be effective from the start of the year 2010. With more added security features, this new sticker meets with the ICAO standards and recommended practices.

The new all-purpose Visa Sticker was inaugurated by the Minister of State, Controller of Immigration and Emigration Sh. Ilyas Hussain Ibrahim in a ceremony held in the Expatriate Monitoring and Repatriation Division on the 3rd of January 2010.

Department of Immigration and Emigration had conducted a series of fraudulent document training programs with some of their foreign partners starting from 30 of Sep to 03 of Dec 2009.   

The training sessions were lectured by first secretary of Canadian Immigration in Colombo Mr. James Martin (Migration Integrity Officer) and first secretary of Australian Immigration in Colombo Mr. Nigel Muir (Principle Migration Officer). Both these gentleman’s are professionals in their field. The training programs were carried out at the Island Aviation training facility at Male’ International airport.

These basic fraudulent document classes were mainly targeted to the newly recruited staffs of Immigration but they were joined by staffs from Island Aviation and Cyprea Maldives. A more advanced training program was also conducted for the senior staffs of Immigration.

The training programs were very fruitful and all the participants enjoyed the classes since most cases were discussed with real examples. We hope to see the end results of these trainings in the very near future.

The Controller of Immigration and Emigration Mr. Ilyas Hussain has always put great emphasis in training staffs. He believed that thriving excellence service could only be achieved with a well trained team of professionals.