Tanzania Rolls Out E-system for Residence Permits

GENEVA, Switzerland, November 5, 2013/African Press Organization (APO)/ -- On 1st November 2013 IOM Tanzania, under the Capacity Building for Border Management (CBBM) project, rolled-out a biometric enrollment system for residence permits at Immigration Department HQ in Dar es Salaam.

The new system, built on the IOM Border Management Information System and customized to Tanzanian needs, will allow the immigration department to capture biometric samples from the applicants and to register the applicants' data in an electronic database.

The system will speed up the delivery process, reduce human error and provide more transparency during the process, with the final objective of having an automated and paperless permit application process.

“Tanzania immigration department has been waiting for a long time to have such a system, which will considerably improve our ability to deliver an efficient and fast service to our customers,” said the Principal Commissioner of Immigration Service.

The roll-out of the e-system is one of the final activities of the CBBM project. The project, “Capacity Building for Border Management” is a cross-border approach to combat irregular migration and establish a border management information system along the borders of Malawi, Mozambique, Tanzania and Zambia.

The project was funded by the European Union and co-funded by United Nations Tanzania (One UN Fund), the Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA), the US State Department's Bureau for Population, Refugees and Migration (PRM) and Servico de Estrangeiros e Fronteiras (SEF).

Under the two-year project, the immigration departments of the participating countries were provided with trainings on counter trafficking, migration and health, security documents, identity and data management.

In addition they were trained on border management information system and on Standard Operating Procedures (SOPs.) Two workshops were conducted on the One Stop Border Post (OSBP) concept.