PPM-aligned lawmaker says expatriates should wear trackers, 'like convicts'

Kelaa constituency MP Ali Arif has on Tuesday suggested that local immigration force expatriates to wear trackers for their duration in the country.

MP Arif, a staunch supporter of defeated former president Abdulla Yameen, said at the People’s Majlis deliberations on addressing the large number of undocumented foreign workers in the country, that this would be an ‘easy and good’ solution.

“If our honorable speaker wants a solution to the matter at hand, then I have an easy and good one, the immigration department should make every expatriate they process wear one of those tags that are placed on convicts”, Arif said.

Arif further said that any expatriate without said tags can then be identified as being undocumented and unlawfully living in the Maldives. Arif proposed that expatriates currently living in the Maldives should also be brought in and made to wear trackers.

Several lawmakers had suggested that current immigration laws be amended so as to make the process of bringing in expatriates and coming to work in the Maldives more transparent.