Authority opens port office to document incoming vessels

Business

By PETER ESILA
THE Papua New Guinea Immigration and Citizenship Authority (ICA) opened a new office at the Motukea International Terminal outside Port Moresby yesterday to ensure compliance and ease of business.
ICA chief migration officer Stanis Hulahau said the K80,000 facility would enable officers to conveniently document incoming vessels.
Hulahau told ICA officers and representatives of PNG Ports which provided the land and National Agriculture Quarantine and Inspection Authority (Naqia) that his agency remained committed to ensuring compliance at ports of entry.
He said his administration was focused on improving the current ICA system where the processing and clearance of foreigners entering PNG on cargo vessels was in batches which was a paper process and did not involve face-to-face contact with ICA officers.
He said this had allowed the entry of undocumented people and ICA aimed to minimise this by having a presence at ports and other entry points.
He said the opening of an ICA processing office at Motukea outside Port Moresby was the start of this initiative.
“The role of the officers who are going to work here now is to physically clear or process people arriving on vessels, yachts, cruise liners and fishing vessels, logging ships, cargo ships, particularly foreigners,” he said.
“In the ports such as these, we expect to see undocumented people, who have not been issued entry permits such as visa or people who do not have a seaman’s book, but arriving in the country.Without those documents, they are unlawfully in the country and under the Migration Act, such people like that when they are found to be illegally in the country, we detain them and deport them.”
He said similar offices would be built in other ports too.
“We are looking at having offices established in various ports around the country. We are now in discussions with PNG Ports to establish an office in Rabaul and Lae and other major ports.”