No more porus borders: Minister Chimwendo says Malawi to strengthen security

Minister of Homeland Security Richard Chimwendo Banda has said that secure borders are crucial for national security and development.

Minister Chimwendo Banda: Border security will be tight

Borders protect people from outside threats like Coronavirus and generate revenue for government to carry out developmental programmes.

Speaking at Muloza Border Post in Mulanje on Monday where he addressed Police and Immigration Officers as part of his familiarization tour.

Banda said this was the reason government plans to strengthen border security by creating a conducive working environment to motivate officers and mobilizeresources for smooth operations.

“We want to see a mindset change so that we have hard working officers who uphold professionalism,”the Minister said.

He said that Government was aware of the challenges security officers in the country face when discharging their duties and that itwas working to address the same.

On staff houses, Banda said government has already allocated funds in the budget to be presented in September at Parliament to the construction of houses for the officers so that they could live close to their duty station to respond timely to security emergencies.

He said he was aware that some officers have been on the same post for many years while others were not promoted on merit, noting that some officers were promoted in cohorts by previous government without following proper human resource procedures.

“We will still honour these promotions and make sure that the budget takes them into consideration. However, we will normalize the situation to make sure that long service, professionalism and merit are also considered,” Banda added.

The Minister thanked the officers for the dedication to their work regardless of the challenges, appealing for integrity and professionalism when discharging their duties, saying immigration and road traffic departments score highly on the corruption index.

Regional Immigration Officer for the South, Joseph Biziwiki said the closure of borders as a measure to control further spread of Covid-19 has created security lapses as they are no longer being monitored.

“There’s need to liaise with the police to deploy security officers to monitor these borders,” he said.

Officer In-charge for Muloza Immigration Border Post, Jackson Lamiere hailed government for taking action to deal with challenges immigration officers are facing, saying this will ease their work.

He said it was difficult for Officers to make patrols along the border because the post only has one vehicle as such the country was losing a lot of money because of porous borders that were enabling people from Mozambique to enter the country with goods without paying revenue.

Lamiere added that Covid-19 has greatly affected revenue collection at the facility as they are no longer issuing visas to foreigners.

“For example, from June to July,2019, the border post realized about US$53,000 yet this year between the same time it has collected nothing,” he disclosed.

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Jason Chadzunda
Jason Chadzunda
3 years ago

This minister is just another waste of space. He is not very conversant with his job specifications. You can not be talking of sealing borders when the rest of the world is encouraging to have open borders for business and transportation. And by the way, what resources do you have to implement such a massive move? Developed nations are failing to police their borders from illegal immigrants into Europe and yet they do have enough equipment to police their borders, how are you going to arrest this problem Mr. Minister? Your handling of things is somehow turning the country into… Read more »

Mofolo
Mofolo
3 years ago

Borders are a thing of the past you should be looking at to ease transportation of goods and people across Malawi and Mozambique not sealing porous borders. As far as I know Malawi and Mozambique are practically borderless you can go either way if you want with no problems including to farm check with the people along the borders how best to address our shared resources

Benjones
Benjones
3 years ago

Update on 67 illegal immigrants from Salima Sugar.

Ian Gamba
Ian Gamba
3 years ago

Koma lionenso ma immigration officers nawonso amatibera kwambiri podinditsa passport pa boda amafuna R50 popita kapena pochoka ku theba akuwika mthumba mwawo. Kodi boma likudziwa zimenezi? Bolani ndalazi zikapita ku boma

Last edited 3 years ago by Ian Gamba
Chili
Chili
3 years ago

You just like talking cheap shit…mbuzi ya munthu iwe

ERUTU
ERUTU
3 years ago

BOMA ILO 💪🏾🔥🐓🇲🇼

Malume Chakwelagalu
Malume Chakwelagalu
3 years ago

So you cant appreciate the impact of COVID-19 on cross boarder trade..iwe ndi galu kwabasi..

You dont have any strategy on reforms ..no wionder ukungobwebweta ase..tikuthandiza dont worry

Masauso Munyunga
Masauso Munyunga
3 years ago

You are all idiots who will not appreciate good. What’s bad from ministers comments inu akuba? Tikubwera

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