By Mabinty M. Kamara
Amidst public outcry over the increase in the cost of acquiring passport, the Sierra Leone Immigration Department have defended the move, saying they had to honor the contract signed with the company printing it.
Last week the price of a passport was suddenly increased from Le750, 000 to Le950, 000.
The Deputy Chief Immigration Officer, Amadu Bah, said the change did not come from government, explaining that the agreement was that they should pay US$100 for per copy. He said this amount is pegged on the official exchange rate of the Dollar.
“It’s not a change we necessarily wanted to do. But before we embrace the change, we did all the relevant things. We contacted The Bank of Sierra Leone to know what the exchange rate was and they advised us. And the other thing we did was that we contacted the National Public Procurement Authority (NPPA) who are the authorities in this country that are mandated to advise MDA’s on procurement, and they advised us that we had little choices to go by. We were obliged to agree with the contract by making the change. It’s not something that we did in isolation,” he explained.
Bah stressed that they followed due process to reach the decision.
“It’s a change that we resisted for a very long time as the contractor has been asking for this change for quite a while. The only thing I can add is that although US$100 passport fee itself is what’s in the contract, if we do international comparison to what a passport cost here in relation to other parts of the world, I don’t think we are doing bad with the cost of our passport,” he said.
This passport printing deal with the UK firm, De La Rue was first reached in 2014. It saw Sierra Leone migrate from the machine readable passport to e-passport, in line with the standards of the International Civil Aviation Organization.
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