Police handover 50 expats to Immigration for illegal trading
Except for a few stalls, all of the stalls are run by foreigners in the vegetable markets.
By
Fathmath Ahmed Shareef
Police have handed over 50 foreigners over to Immigration for conducting business illegally, in an operation conducted on Saturday.
Police have launched an operation to identify illegal foreigners in Maldives. The operation raided several vegetable markets in Male on Friday and Saturday.
A senior police spokesman wrote on his X on Saturday evening that 50 foreigners were handed over to Immigration on Saturday as part of the police operation to track down illegal immigrants. He did not give any further details about the operation.
Except for a few stalls, all of the stalls are run by foreigners in the vegetable markets. Although the cells are allocated to Maldivians, most of them are run by foreigners. The public has always expressed concern that many of these foreigners are illegal immigrants.
The operation, which began on February 2, has taken biometric data and photographs of hundreds of foreigners already.
The operation, named Kurangi, is conducted in two phases by the Homeland Security Ministry, police and immigration, and will be completed within three years.
