Columns

While justice strikes back at politicians and bureaucrats for corruption and misdemeanours over the years, there is more to be done in other places where the rotten apple continues to rot away.

This happens mainly in big state institutions such as the Department of Immigration and Emigration, where thousands of citizens still queue, I am told, awaiting service, and still others sleep overnight—not one night but more—because the wings of service that should function with rectitude and incorruptibility have been crippled, deliberately or otherwise.

So when the files of citizens who have passports provided to them disappear from cabinets or whatever holes in the walls where they are kept, it may not simply be because rats have reached them—I mean the four-legged ones which seem to have more ready access.

There are many ways of obtaining them. Sometimes it is called “cash for trash”. Remember a top official of DIE (Do or Die) had to stand in the dock and swear that a vital file had vanished.

On another occasion the head of the DIE had to spend a day or so behind bars for ignoring court orders.

It will not be long before a former state minister who thought her British background would be sufficient to circumvent some hurdles and obtain what she needs to settle down here. She surely will make her next appearance before the law.

But there are other games in town, some played by those in the Immigration Department. Whether they are ruses, clerical errors, stupid mistakes made by those cleverer than they are or simply do not understand what they read—if they could read at all.

I spotted it earlier this year when I applied for a new Sri Lankan passport in January 2025 through our London High Commission, where I had worked as Deputy High Commissioner 10 years or so ago.

The passports of my wife and mine were due to expire on October 1, 2024, and we had intended to apply for replacements around May but were advised that they would take a long time as there was a run on new passports.

Unfortunately, my wife fell seriously ill and was in and out of a London hospital and in no condition to sign passport applications. On November 29 she passed away in a London hospital. Because her death involved many legal and family engagements and travelling to Sri Lanka, I went to the High Commission and completed a passport application and other requirements.

This was to ensure that a passport application would reach Immigration in my absence and a new passport would await me.

Then the farce began. The day after I returned, the High Commission sent me a message from the Immigration Department asking me for my birth certificate. Now it was getting curiouser and curiouser, as Alice might have said in Wonderland.

Having worked in our diplomatic missions, often liaising with our own bodies and working for foreign organisations and liaising with their counterparts, I had considered it always healthy and helpful to ease the other’s work.

In pursuance of that habit, I wrote a personal letter to the Commissioner-General of the Department of Immigration and Emigration, dated Jan 8, 2025, setting out helpful data.

It started thus: “Dear Sir, This is to inform you that I have applied for a new passport to replace the existing passport which expired on 1st Oct 2024.

“I am aware that a birth certificate is required when applying for a new passport.” I then went on to provide some background information that would clear any confusion.

This letter was written in the presence of the minister counsellor, a respectable senior diplomatic officer of the mission.

What was so irksome, disrespectful and utterly objectionable was that no effort had been made to read the contents of the letter, especially when it was addressed to the head of the department, an act of despicable condescension to the institution.

Let’s consider the facts as available to this officer or whoever it was who sought the birth certificate.

His immediate task should have been to peruse any passport or travel document of mine available at Immigration. That would have been the previous passport, which expired on Oct 1, 2024. If he then examined all the passports issued to me, he would have found that since 2005 they bear the stamp ‘The holder is a dual citizen’, or words to that effect.

If a citizen is to be a dual citizen of Sri Lanka, he should be declared a citizen of Sri Lanka and have a birth certificate of the country concerned.

I was declared a dual citizen of Sri Lanka in 2005 despite the fact that senior state officials had declared my birth certificate had perished and that statements made to that effect by the Citizen Division of the Defence Ministry had accepted that in granting my dual citizenship.

The Immigration Department should also be aware that on 15/1/2009 I was provided with a diplomatic passport No D3642216 when I served as Deputy Chief of Mission of our embassy and later as Deputy High Commissioner in London.

What surely must occur even to a person with basic education is that I could not have been appointed to diplomatic postings or been declared a dual citizen with that clearly stamped on my passport by a government department that was all this responsible for doing so and in fact has continued to do so until recently due to some error of judgment.

How many such critical errors of judgment might have occurred in the hands of incompetent, ignorant and irresponsible officials because of such conduct?

I have much more to say about these incompetents, many of whom survive on the backs of equally disposable politicians.

But let me add this before I wind up. The first passport I had to acquire was in 1964 when a journalist, my senior Joe Sigera, and I were selected to attend a journalism conference in Israel. However, we had to return home after two days in Bombay due to the Rann of Kutch short war between India and Pakistan.

The point is that since 1964—60 years ago—I have been issued Sri Lankan passports, as I was a Sri Lankan citizen and recognised internationally by media institutions, academic institutions and wherever I have won awards abroad.

Do I need anything in these last days?