The Tribune

By RASHAD ROLLE

Tribune Staff Reporter

rrolle@tribunemedia.net

ACTING Immigration Director William Pratt said the Department of Immigration needs more than 300 additional immigration officers and clerical workers to handle its current workload and the work that will arise from the “new” school permit policy, which comes into effect this fall.

He said to handle the influx of school permit applications expected for children of non-nationals, immigration officers and clerical workers might need to “put in additional hours” at work, including work on Saturdays.

However, he expressed confidence that the department will ultimately meet its workload.

His statements to The Tribune came after Foreign Affairs and Immigration Minister Fred Mitchell told this newspaper yesterday that the Department of Immigration will meet the challenges involved with processing the school permit applications.

On Monday, Education Director Lionel Sands said the school permit policy will affect about 6,000 children of non-nationals entering grade one in the fall along with a number of students making the transition into junior and senior high schools.

Asked about the Immigration Department’s capacity to handle this, Mr Mitchell said: “Whatever the challenges are, the Department of Immigration will meet those challenges. We set the rules and so we’ll have to apply them. There is a new set of officers that are going to be hired shortly and Cabinet is in the decision making process with regard to a new border management control system. There is never going to be a perfect time to start enforcing this. We have to start now. Whatever the exigencies are, they will be met so I’m not concerned about that.”

Meanwhile, Mr Pratt noted that in the last annual budget, the government allowed for the department to hire 100 additional officers, “about 60” of whom have already been employed. This was the first time in “over five or six years” that immigration officers were hired, he said.

“Through that budget, the government had agreed to give us 100 officers and we believe we have hired about 60 so far. The government gave us the okay about this because we are very short-staffed. We have Family Islands, enforcement and other areas that need officers. We hadn’t hired officers in over five, six years and then some officers resigned, died and retired. Our members have been reduced, so that 100 was to replenish our resources a bit.”

He added: “We will still have to continue to recruit. Even (with) the 60, when we dispersed them between Freeport, the Family Islands and other places, we still need additional staff. (When all 100 are hired) we will reach a manageable place but it won’t be enough and we plan to recruit again. We are at the lowest in terms of staff among the various law enforcement agencies. We do need at least 600 or 700 officers to be at a level to do the job. We have over 200 right now. The clerical staff supports us as well but we need additional clerical staff. We will continue to put provisions for this in the upcoming budgets.”

As for the department’s capacity to handle the expected school permit applications in a timely manner, he said: “Once applications are in, we will put a special project in place to deal with it in an efficient manner. If it means we need to put additional hours in to process the applications, we will do that, even if it means working on Saturday and later in the evenings. But once the applications are in, we will process them.”

Mr Mitchell announced the school permit requirement last month. Former Minister of Immigration and Foreign Affairs Brent Symonette has said the requirement should be postponed until next year and has questioned how immigration officials will be able to handle the processing of the applications.