Despite the Supreme Court ruling, the visa and immigration process remains crippled by the dark interventions of rogue politicians, MP Patali Champika Ranawaka has alleged.
Taking to ‘X’, MP Ranawaka revealed that state-owned Mobitel was willing to provide its services for visa issuance.
“Mobitel stands ready to resume operations, but the Immigration Controller is under oppressive control,” the MP further said.
His remarks come after the Supreme Court issued an Interim Order in August, temporarily halting the Cabinet’s decision to outsource its visa application process to GBS Technology Services & IVS Global- FZCO, VFS VF Worldwide Holdings LTD led consortium.
Announcing that this suspension will remain in effect until the petitions filed against the decision are finally resolved, the court also issued an interim injunction on the implementation of the agreements with the two foreign entities.
Several fundamental rights petitions were filed in the Supreme Court calling for action against the procedural violations and abuse of public trust by officials in the procurement of private entities to handle the Electronic Travel Authorization (ETA) system for the issuance of visas for tourists visiting Sri Lanka.
The visa issuance system by global visa processing service, VFS Global and its charges came under the spotlight after a local passenger had raised concerns over the process, with the video of the incident being widely circulated on social media.
A probe launched by the Committee on Public Finance (CoPF) also found that VFS Global had been picked without calling for official bids and had resulted in the Department of Immigration and Emigration losing out on receiving competitive rates for visa issuance.
“If competitive bids were called for then the government could have obtained the services for a fee less than US$ 25,” CoPF Chairman MP Harsha de Silva said, presenting the CoPF report in Parliament recently.
Stating that local firm Mobitel had also in the past offered to provide some service for US$1, MP de Silva said however, no specifications had been issued on the criteria for the visa issuance service amidst which VFS Global had been selected.
He said the CoPF is of the view that if specification documents had been available then, not only Mobitel but other overseas firms would also have had an opportunity to engage in competitive bidding for the visa issuance service in Sri Lanka, adding that an issue has arisen as to why the selection of firms had been conducted without a specification document. (Newswire)
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