The Border Management Authority (BMA) has introduced new entry and exit stamps for port of entry in South Africa, effective this August.
The move comes after several reports of corruption and many fraudulent activities and passport fraud. One of the biggest challenges with the old passport stamps was that officials and even those who are not within the system could purchase them at ordinary stationary shops and fake the features.
" In the past few months, we observed widespread misuse of these stamps with individuals illegally stamping people passports with fraudulently reproduced stamps," states BMA.
The new BMA stamps have tighter security features.
"This initiative forms part of the BMA’s broader commitment to strengthening national security and represents a deliberate step towards enhancing the integrity of border control processes," reads a statement from BMA.
The new stamps will have an engraved BMA logo and the big five displayed on them.
"The BMA collaborated with Government Printing Works and designed the new stamps with the highest security standards including the BMA logo to prevent tampering, forgery and unauthorised use," states the report.
Another good feature is that the new stamp will indicate the type of border post travellers are using. For instance, those using air border posts will have an aircraft engraved on the stamp.
To minimise corruption, each immigration officer will have his/her stamp with a particular number. This will make it easy to trace corrupt officials who facilitate illegal immigration.
"Each of the immigration officers have been allocated a specific stamp with its unique number linked to each officer in order to trace back should their allocated stamp be found to facilitate illegal migration into the country," states BMA.
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