The Department of International Relations and Co-operation (DIRCO) has announced plans to start charging countries for the deportation of their nationals who have violated South Africa’s (SA) immigration laws.
This comes as several countries repatriate their citizens amidst ongoing protests against undocumented foreign nationals.
Over the past two years, SA has deported more than 100 000 undocumented foreign nationals, incurring costs of millions of rands to the fiscus.
DIRCO Spokesperson Chrispin Phiri says the repatriations indicate that countries have the capability to bring back their own nationals.
“Moving forward we will also be billing countries for their foreign nationals who have to be deported or who are in our criminal detention facilities and have to be deported back into their countries. At least now we can see that there’s capacity for countries to extract the foreign nationals who have fallen foul of the law. That’s something that through the department of home affairs we will pursue as a government,” adds Phiri.
–SABC–
