By Ndey Sowe
The Gambia Immigration Department (GID) has in 2019 generated D21,895,680 from processing national identity cards and D5,222,400 from processing non Gambian ID cards.
Superintendent Karanlang Jarju, the officer in charge of revenue and statistics said in 2019, the Gambia Immigration has collected revenue of D139,672,840. He made these revelations during a press briefing held by the Gambia Immigration Department recently.
He said D6,843,000 was obtained from alien cards, D43,068,2000 was from manual residential permits, D7,955,850 from immigration fees, D34,014,000 was collected from machine-readable passports, D15,617,500 from biometric ID cards and D5,056,210 was from MRP, RP, Alien, NIC, and Non-Gambian forms respectively.
“While the Gambia Immigration Department is not recognized as a traditional revenue-generating organization, over the years, however, this pattern has seen some changes”, he said, adding that available statistics tend to suggest that GID is one of the leading non-tax revenue generation institutions that continue to contribute in substantial quantities to the consolidated fund.
He explained that the department in 2019 projected to generate revenue of D139, 672,840 which he said never happened in the history of the department.
However, he said by the close of the year 2020 also, “we are expecting to score more than 90 million dalasis”.
He highlighted that the ‘gigantic performance’ is largely due to the intervention of Director General of Immigration and regional commissioners. He said stations and units were advised and assisted to adhere to approved financial practices, zero tolerance to corruption, intensified engagements of non-Gambians to regularize their status.
He remarked: “After his appointment as Director-General of Immigration from 10th October 2018 to 31st December 2019, just fifteen months in the office, there are significant changes and improvement in revenue collection”.
He added that the department worked tirelessly in this period under review and attained many successes. “We hope to maintain or improve on the standard set”.
Ebrima Manneh, Deputy Commissioner Research and Planning Unit Gambia Immigration Department highlighted the current projects the department is implementing.
He said one of them is “enhancing collective capacity for managing borders and protecting border communities” project, migration information and data analysis system project, Africard/Zetes, the Blue Sahel project, Semlex, Frontex as well as Securiport.
