Officers from the immigration department have been accused of demanding an entry fee of a sum of MK20,000 from travelers outside the country without a COVID 19 negative certificate.
The allegations have been made as reports of a new variant of COVID 19 called Omicron has been detected in some parts of southern Africa.
In an interview with MIJ Online Hashim Issa, from Tanzania said upon failing to produce a Covid 19 negative certificate at one of the posts along the M1 stretch in the north, immigration officers demanded a sum of thirty thousand kwacha for him to enter the country.
“Last time I paid K15,000.00, they started from K30, 000.00 , I started negotiating and they said if you don’t want to pay the money, tomorrow morning you will be taken to Mzuzu for a COVID 19 test and I will be required to pay 100 USD which is almost K80,000.00 kwacha” said Issa.
He added that he just paid the money and was left to proceed with his journey to Lilongwe.
Reacting to the allegations, Wellington Chiponde spokesperson of the immigration department said his office is not aware of the development and was quick to urge citizens to properly channel the allegations to the department.
“We are not aware of such allegations, and we would also want to urge the citizens that there are proper channels of reporting such allegations” said Chiponde.
Chiponde further said the department is a professional entity which has tightened security to ensure that there is no further spread of COVID 19 pandemic with respect to the importation of the virus.
“As department of immigration and citizenship services we recognize that we are a key stakeholder in as far as curbing the further spread of the pandemic, and we recognize that the spread of this pandemic mostly escalates because of influx of irregular immigrants and we are intensifying border patrols and we are mounting several check points so that nobody enters the country without following formalities” added Chiponde.
Meanwhile the presidential taskforce on COVID 19 has announced new measures to help in preventing the new Covid 19 variant , Omicron reported in some countries.
In the new measures, government says in addition to negative PCR based Covid 19 certificate that is no older than 72 hours, all arriving travelers of all nationalities including Malawi , will be expected to show a valid electronic Covid 19 full vaccination certificate , failure which , will be subjected for vaccination at entry point.
As of 29 November, Malawi, has an accumulative confirmed cases of 61,901, where a total of 2,305 succumbed to the virus.