Three hundred Somali and Ethiopian nationals who entered Zimbabwe as refugees over the past two months have slipped out of holding centres and disappeared, the state-controlled Herald reported on Monday.
”When we made a check on them [at the holding centres], they were nowhere to be found,” Chief Immigration Officer Elasto Mugwadi told the paper.
”We are worried about this trend and feel Zimbabwe is being used as a transit point for irregular migration into other countries,” he said.
Mugwadi said some foreigners, including Nigerians, were entering Zimbabwe illegally to lead ”luxurious lives”.
”We have received reports of marriages of convenience in the case of most Nigerian immigrants and the general flooding of foreigners not employed in [the] formal system but leading luxurious lives,” he added.
Zimbabwe’s weakening local currency makes it an attractive destination for those with access to hard currency that can be sold on the parallel market.
Mugwadi said the illegal immigrants were often involved in criminal activities.
”We have discovered that some of these nationals use forged travel documents before they find their way into prostitution, human trafficking, drug peddling or illegal dealings in foreign currency,” he told the newspaper.
At least 200 refugees fleeing the restive Great Lakes region of Central Africa were last month reported to have entered Zimbabwe since July through the country’s porous eastern and northern borders with Mozambique and Zambia.
Earlier this year a controversial police urban clean-up campaign that swept through poor suburbs of Zimbabwe’s cities netted dozens of foreigners, including some from Burundi, the Democratic Republic of Congo and Nigeria. – Sapa-DPA