There’s no policy to privatise ports of entry â€` Gigaba

Source: The Citizen, 08/05/2018

He referred to Fireblade Aviation’s immigration services at OR Tambo
International Airport, which it pays for, but says it gets other
services for free.
Home affairs minister Malusi Gigaba told members of parliament today
that no approval policy has been established regarding the
privatisation of sections of national ports of entry.
Gigaba was briefing the Portfolio Committee on Home Affairs on the
proposed privatisation of a section of the OR Tambo International
Airport to Fireblade Aviation, as well as the possibility of
privatising sections of Cape Town International Airport and the
airport in George in the Southern Cape.
“If the minister had granted permission, the minister would have
followed legal prescripts until the end. In the absence of such legal
prescripts, we stand with our belief that there was no approval of
this decision formally granted and the matter is really irrelevant.
“But the issue we are raising, as I say, is the matter of principle
which applies to whether the poor are entitled to good quality
service only after the rich have received them. To whether the laws
of the country can be disregarded when the rich are concerned and
whether the government should provide free services to the rich,”
said the minister.
“When we say that there is no policy, we meant that it’s not the
political argument, it’s a legal argument until there is a policy
that guides, you can’t just decide because I have money, I will take
these without policy being there.”
Gigaba further said that the cabinet was still dealing with the
matter of rationalising the number of international airports that the
country has. “Cabinet has taken a decision at our request as home
affairs to rationalise the international airports because we have
been complaining.
“For example, Upington is an international airport only in summer
during hunting seasons and in winter during harvesting season. Nelson
Mandela, is an international airport but who lands there?
“So if there is no soccer game, rugby game or international event, we
have to provide immigration officers for an airport that is not
utilised for such purpose. We need to rationalise the immigration
officers and we have to increase our capacities,” he said.
In 2017, the OR Tambo international airport was seriously
undercapacitated and home affairs’ view was that there was a need to
rationalise the immigration capacity to provide services at the busy
international airports where such services were required, added
Gigaba.
“The matters went to court, we are appealing the matter in the
Constitutional court, not to get to the merits of the case, but to
just explain how we got to where we are. The court’s decision was in
favour of the applicants. Our arguments, both in relation to the high
court and the supreme court was that we have not been listened to, in
terms of the merits of our arguments, but the matters were based on
what we thought was peripheral and dismissable issues that served
before the courts.”
He said that he had left the department of home affairs at the time
when judgments were being made and appeals being made until his
recent return in March. When the supreme court made its judgment
around September, October last year in favour of applicants, “they
then submitted a supplementary application to be allowed to operate
the Fireblade, meanwhile pending a decision by home affairs to appeal
or not”.
The permission was granted on condition that they (applicants) were
going to pay for the immigration services and that had subsequently
been done, said Gigaba, adding that only immigration services were
being paid and all other government services were not being paid, “so
meaning that government services were being provided to a private
family for free as a result of the decision”.