Immigration takes over facility for holding inadmissible persons |13 January 2016

The local civil aviation authority and the immigration have opened a two-level building which will cater for prohibited immigrants or inadmissible persons at the Seychelles International Airport.

The principal secretary (PS) for immigration and civil status Michel Marie, PS for foreign affairs Maurice Loustau-Lalanne, chief executive of the Seychelles Civil Aviation Authority (SCAA) Gilbert Faure and chairman of the SCAA board Captain David Savy yesterday unveiled a commemorative plaque to unveil the new facility.

Captain Savy then handed over the keys to the new facility to the director general of immigration Ronald Focktave.

A memorandum of agreement was signed by Mr Faure and PS Marie to provide the basic framework to ensure the effective management of the inadmissible persons holding facility.

Under this agreement, SCAA will ensure provision for security, housekeeping, utilities, internal transportation and maintenance services, while the immigration will oversee the inadmissible persons basic needs in terms of food, non-alcoholic beverages, baggage, medical attention and also liaise with other agencies should there be a need to do so.

The official opening was followed by a tour of the new facility.

SCAA has fully funded the facility which includes construction of the building, provision of furniture and utilities.

This new modern facility with the incorporation of special safety and security designs will cater to the comfort of any inadmissible person or prohibited immigrant and other necessary administrative needs per ICAO (International Civil Aviation Organisation) convention Annex 9.

This project which amounted to about R5 million was carried out by building contractor O-Nivo Construction (Pty) Ltd, designed by architect Richard Hoareau and engineering work by Daniel Benoiton. The quantity surveyor (QS) was Nigel Roucou and landscaping was contracted to Eco Green.

It took a total of 10 months to complete this project.

As it is located in the most southern part of the airport, the inadmissible person or immigrants will be transferred internally to reach the facility said the airport management general manager Patrick Hoareau.

“We have made internal arrangements for transferring these people. They will not leave the airport and the distance from one end of the airport to the other is about 3km,” said Mr Hoareau.

PS Marie thanked SCAA for putting this holding facility for inadmissible persons and immigrants at the disposal of the immigration department thus allowing them to continue meeting their international obligations.

“With the growing number of passengers we also encounter more people who want to cross our borders without respective documents. With this facility it will solve the constraint we previously faced of holding these people pending their departure from this country. We welcome this facility and hope it helps us to meet all our obligations, thus giving people more dignity because these people are not criminals,” he said.

Mr Focktave said on average about 25 inadmissible persons or immigrants are held at the airport per month and last year there were around 300.

“It exists everywhere in all international airports. Some passengers do not meet certain immigration requirements to enter the country,” he said.

Mr Focktave gave some of the criteria used to declare a person inadmissible by the immigration.

He said: “A person arrives in the country with no return ticket poses a constraint on us if we let him in as he will not be able to pay for his ticket back. There are others who come and say they have booked a hotel and upon investigation the hotel indicates that although a booking exists no payment has been made yet but we then find out the person does not have enough money to pay for the hotel. There are other categories where a person comes in to work without a work permit; they come in with documents which imply they are not coming as a genuine visitor and have provided the immigration with false information and also if a person comes with a fake, forged or altered passport.”

He pointed out that recently they have been receiving mostly cases of passengers with fake passports, counterfeit or insufficient amount of money for their visit.