By George Omondi
Kenya has lifted passport and work permit requirements for Rwandese.
The move is a reciprocal gesture to a country already credited with leading the way in removing travel restrictions for the region’s citizens even before the common market rollout.
Immigration Minister Otieno Kajwang said Kenya was ready to extend the same preferential treatment to citizens of other East African Community countries whose governments offer similar treatment to Kenyan citizens in their territories.
“We have removed passport and work permit requirements for Rwandese seeking to work in the country because their government was the first member state to drop the same requirements on all the region’s citizens,” said Mr Kajwang
The rollout of a common market is expected to open up borders for free movement of goods, persons, labour, services and capital.
It would also automatically guarantee the regional citizens the rights of establishment and residence within the bloc as long as they produce documents identifying themselves as citizen of any of the five member states.
But Tanzania managed to convince her partners to amend the common market protocol’s annexes, resulting in the new rules where rights such as access to land, territory access and business establishment must now be subjected to member state’s national laws.
Ease movement
When they appended their signatures to the common market protocol, the region’s heads of state summit allowed member countries to forge reciprocal agreements on bilateral basis to allow their citizens to enjoy free cross border movement, right of establishment and access to land.
Late last year, the EAC negotiators agreed to issue all their citizens with machine readable national identity cards to ease movements across the countries which have mutually agreed to eliminate passport and use only national IDs as recognisable travel documents
On Tuesday, Mr Kajwang said the immigration department was set to start issuing Kenyans with machine readable IDs —commonly referred to as the third generation IDs — within the next six months of the protocol ratification.
“Kenya is set to start accepting the machine readable cards as identification documents at points of entry by July. While I cannot confirm whether or not Tanzania and Uganda will do the same, I can only appeal for leadership,” Mr Kajwang said.
Mr Kajwang’s assurance follows last month’s promise by the immigration department to decentralise work permits and passport issuing points from Kisumu, Mombasa and Nairobi.
The department also pledged to start renewing passports for citizens of other member states in the country.
Mr Kajwang spoke at the EAC ministry headquarters during a Press conference Tuesday on the status of the regional integration.
Source: Business Daily
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