BY INVESTIGATIVE WRITER.

The ministry of immigration is once again on the spotlight over how senior officers at its Nyayo house offices in Nairobi handled a controversial deportation saga involving three Chinise nationals who were found to be in the country illegally and ordered back to their country 3 months ago.

The 3 chinese ,according to documents availed to us by our sources were ordered to leave the country immediately in August this year by a Kisumu court after they were found to have violated various immigration rules and regulations regarding aliens.

According to our sources the court issued the deportation orders after the immigration officers responsible for handling prosecution matters in the department successfully provided evidence in court against the chinese prompting the magistrate to pass a verdict.

The trio had faced various charges ranging from being in Kenya illegally to engaging in employment without obtaining a work permit and failure to register as aliens all of which were considered as violations of the country’s immigration laws .

They are understood to have pleaded guilty to all the charges brought against them in court and the trial magistrate ordered them to be deported immediately back to China.

According to the documents in our possesion,the court also ordered them to pay shs. 10,000 each or go to prison for a period of six months for each of the three counts they faced.

However they opted to pay the fines and were handed back to the immigration officers in Kisumu who were to facilitate the deportation arrangements in cordination with their Nairobi office.

But in what appears to be a high level corruption syndictate some unscrupullous immigration officers based in Nyayo house,the ministry’s headquaters allowed the deportees to slip away in their hands.

Three months down the line the court’s directive to the ministry to have the chinese deported is yet to be effected and nobody is explaining why it was defied.

A reveletion that might shock even the magistrate who gave the orders is the fact that the chinese found their way back to Nakuru where they continue with their daily activities without any hitch or fear of being arrested.

This is the town where only three months ago they had been nabbed by the immigration officers from Kisumu who took them to court but whom they nolonger have the need to hide from any more.

Nakuru town is under the jurisdiction of the western Kenya region immigration office whose principal immigration officer sits in Kisumu.

Kisumu’s immigration office whose officers effected the arrests that saw the chinese arraigned in court are now a dejected and a frustrated lot.

After several weeks of investigations they pounced on some three chinese nationals whom they had enough grounds to suspect had been flouting the rules of the land being foriegners and they chose to act.

But the manner in which the immigration office in Nairobi handled the deportation case against the chinese has left a bitter rivalry between its officers who were involved in the case in Kisumu.

While the officers in Kisumu immigration office want the court order obeyed and the chinese thrown out of the country, those in the Nyayo house office want the issue abandoned and forgotten.

The matter has left a division amongst the officers who now feels they are not being appreciated for implementing the law by colleagues whose sole aim is to make a kill out of foreigners who brake the law but get away with it after parting with bribes.

In an interview with this journalist an officer who wished not to be named said they want the minister to persue the case. He said this was not the first case where they are ignored by their superious in Nairobi.

He said the Kisumu office risk becoming irrelevant because it was not allowed to perfom its mandates effectively as demanded.

”We did our best according to what is required of us and we want the court order obeyed.we have realised that some officers in our Nairobi office are interested in defying the order and we suspect money exchanged hands otherwise why would they fail to act as directed by the court.” posed an officer in a Kisumu office.

Another officer at the office also informed this writer that they did what was required of them but now little can be expected from them because they are not allowed to follow up matters once it is fowarded to headquaters for action.

”We even have been warned by our seniors in Nyayo house to fogett about this matter and not talk about it.”he said.

The officer confirmed that he was involved fully in making arrangements to ferry the chinese from Kisumu to Nairobi so that ministry headquaters could facilitate how the deportees were to eventually exit the country.

”I personally gave out night out to our officers who were detailed to escort these people to Nairobi and did confirm also that they took the chinese upto our offices at Nyayo house so it was not the mistake of this office that the chinese are still around.” he said.

The Chinese whose details including passport numbers we have obtained, first came to Kenya as tourists but soon began working for a chinese investor whose firm is engaged in sale of motor cycles, fittings, maintainance services and sale of accessories.

The company which has also employed a few Kenyans is situated in Nakuru along the busy Kenyatta avenue.

When we visited the company recently to investigate the authenticity of the facts we had about the presence of the chinese we found them working without fear of being apprehended.

Our probe reveales that one of the chinese who were ordered to leave the country by the courts is now heading a branch newly opened by his employer in Eldoret town along the Uganda road.

Our crew posed as clients who wanted to buy a motorcycle and pretended to even know one of the chinese whose name had been picked from the court documents.

He emerged from his office after the Kenyan staff working as a salesman told him that he had friends who wished to be served personally by him. Little did he realise that the scheme was intended to smoke him out.

The three according to our source at the firm have been working as supervisors and middle level managers even though they don’t possess any special skill to work in the country since what they do can also be done by locals.

Kenya, just like any other country has its strict rules and regulations governing employment when it comes foreigners.Those who want to work must only be expatriates whose skills may not be sourced locally or where locals who posses the skills are inadequate .

Allowing foreigners to take up jobs which can be done by locals has been condemned by leaders who feel the government is not doing enough to ensure the Kenyan jobless are not subjected to unfair competition by these people.

When we reached the immigration minister Otieno Kajwan’g said the issue was never brought to his attention by the officers who handled it.

He however promised that action will be taken against officers from the ministry who flouted the law.

” We are definately going to investigate the matter seriously because we dont want to encourage corruption in this ministry and any officer who was compromised will answer for his mistakes accordingly” said the minister.

ENDS.

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Date: Wed, 12 Nov 2008 00:46:41 -0800 [02:46:41 AM CST]
From: Dickens Wasonga
Subject: Fw: CORRUPTION PERSISTS AT KENYA’S IMMIGRATION MINISTRY