Reps probes firms' expatriate quota abuse
From Pascal Nwigwe, Abuja
AGAINST the backdrop of an alleged expatriate quota abuse by corporations, some of the companies have been summoned by the House of Representatives Committee on Internal Affairs.
Among the companies to appear before the lawmakers' panel is Elf Petroleum Limited. Already, some officials of the Ministry of Internal Affairs and the Nigerian Immigration Service appeared before the committee at the weekend.
At the meeting, the Internal Affairs Ministry, through its Permanent Secretary Mrs. I. A. Iremere, exonerated itself. The ministry claimed that its officials could readily be misled by misrepresentation of facts in the course of processing expatriate quota applications.
Iremere further explained to the committee chaired by Ehoigie West Idahosa (Ovie/Okada) that it was the duty of the Immigration Service to verify that the quota granted was correct and to draw the attention of the ministry to instances of non-implementation.
But the Immigrations Service claimed that it's monitoring work was increasingly frustrated by superior authorities like the Ministry of Internal Affairs, which stopped them from carrying out checks on some companies.
On its part, the ministry informed the committee that it had reviewed 400 quotas so far. Of the number, the permanent secretary said that the ministry had had to cancel 200 for non-utilization.
Commending the cancellation, the committee directed that the ministry should embark on more aggressive review of the quota issued in the last few years and make more cancellations.
West-Idahosa told The Guardian that the decision of the committee to undertake direct verifications and interview companies to which quota had been issued, was to enable it to propose and pursue the enactment of laws for the sector.
"We have had to resort to verification because the Immigration Service is completely inefficient and if we want to propose laws, we must know the mischief we seek to cure, so that we do not go ahead to make laws that do not conform with reality," he said.
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