Nyayo House, Nairobi. PHOTO | FILE | NATION MEDIA GROUP
The voracious pack of hungry hyenas is back at Nyayo House, Nairobi, targeting those seeking crucial documents.
Crossing
the gates that lead you to the building housing the Immigration
Department lands you into the hands of a group working in cahoots with
employees of the ministry to extort “customers”.
Applicants
have to part with at least Sh2,500 to secure the release of their
documents, even after paying the requisite fees. Those who cannot read
between the lines make endless visits to the counters.
Driving the application and tracking process online seems to have done little to push the corruption cartels underground.
According to the department, one is required to pay using mobile money, credit/debit card and online banking.
It
should take at least 10 working days to get your first passport once
the form has been physically submitted at Immigration. For all other
applications, it should take about five working days.
LOOKING FOR PASSPORTS
It can take longer if more information is needed or the application form is not filled correctly.
But
this is only on paper. Our investigations reveal the mess that is Nyayo
House’s Immigration Department, where desperate Kenyans looking for
passports and foreigners seeking work permits have become a cash cow for
selfish State employees who are minting thousands of shillings from
them every day.
This newspaper traced
the entire process of passport application of Mr Ian Mwangi, from
filling the forms to when he eventually got his travel document.
Mr Mwangi, who applied for the document on February 23, had to wait for more than a month before getting it.
“I
went to collect my passport on the day that I was told by the
immigration officials, only to be told it was not ready and I had to
come back after a week,” he said.
TRACKING NUMBER
After the one week, Mr Mwangi, from Naivasha, was again told that the document was not ready.
At
this point, we sought the intervention of Dr Gordon Kihalang’wa, then
the Director of Immigration, who is now the Principal Secretary
Immigration, Border Control and Registration of Persons.
After
sending him the tracking number, Dr Kihalang’wa confirmed that the
passport was ready. “The passport is ready. I was told,” he said in a
text message.
After this confirmation, Mr Mwangi visited Nyayo House for the third time and was told to come the following week on Thursday.
Little
did he know that the immigration officers had been frustrating him so
that he could pay a bribe for release of the crucial document.
One
of the middlemen hovering around Nyayo House noticed Mr Mwangi’s
desperate face and approached him to ask if he had had problems getting
served. He answered in the affirmative, informing the stranger that he
had been waiting for over a month.
WAIT FOR AGES
“This is how it works; you will have to pay some money for you to get it, or you will have to wait for ages,” said the broker.
Sunday
Nation followed the entire conversation with the stranger who demanded
Sh2,500 and gave an undertaking that the passport will be out that day.
The
stranger gave a breakdown of how the bribe would be spread. “Out of
this, Sh1,000 will be paid at the Dispatch Department where the file is,
Sh1,000 will go to the officer at the Immigration desk, while the
remaining Sh500 will go to the person who will deliver it to you,” he
said.
The time was 2 pm and the
stranger promised that the document would be out at 5 pm. He was careful
not to give his number or reveal his name. He told us to be at the gate
at exactly 5 pm.
True to his word, he was at the gate at 5 pm with the document, which he gave to Mr Mwangi after he paid Sh2,500.
UNTOLD MISERY
The
corrupt officials have visited untold misery upon innocent Kenyans.
Many people, including Mr Mwangi, have lost golden opportunities outside
the country or have incurred extra expenses because of delayed
passports.
Evidently, there’s a
security breach at Nyayo House, as people who are not officials of the
government access these crucial documents with shocking ease.
The Interior Ministry was ranked the most corrupt by the anti-corruption commission in the 2016 Corruption Index.
Our efforts to get a comment from the department bore no fruit as officials did not respond to emails or text messages.
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