Three petitions have been filed at the Supreme Court against Minister of Public Security Tiran Alles and the government against the VFS visa procedure introduced at the Katunayake Airport.
Opposition MPs Patali Champika Ranawaka, M.A. Sumanthiran, and Rauff Hakeem have filed the three petitions.
The petitioners have called on the court to issue an order suspending the visa system as there was a potential threat of the breach of vital security data from the nation.
“I moved the Supreme Court against Minister of Public Security, @TiranAlles and the Government for allegedly aiding and perpetrating a multi-billion dollar scam involving the IVS visa procedure,” MP Champika Ranawaka said in a post on ‘X’.
Also speaking to the media today, MP Champika Ranawaka said a decision had been taken to file the said petition taking into consideration that they were members of the Parliamentary Committee on Public Finance (CoPF).
Meanwhile, MP Rauff Hakeem told the media that the VFS visa deal was considered a scam which is 10-fold worse than the Central Bank bond scam.
The new visa issuance system by global visa processing service, VFS Global and its charges came under the spotlight after a local passenger had raised concerns over the process, with the video of the incident being widely circulated on social media.
A probe launched by the Committee on Public Finance also found that VFS Global had been picked without calling for official bids and had resulted in the Department of Immigration and Emigration losing out on receiving competitive rates for visa issuance.
“If competitive bids were called for then the government could have obtained the services for a fee less than US$ 25,” CoPF Chairman MP Harsha de Silva said, presenting the CoPF report in Parliament recently.
Stating that local firm Mobitel had also in the past offered to provide some service for US$1, MP de Silva said however, no specifications had been issued on the criteria for the visa issuance service amidst which VFS Global had been selected.
He said the CoPF is of the view that if specification documents had been available then, not only Mobitel but other overseas firms would also have had an opportunity to engage in competitive bidding for the visa issuance service in Sri Lanka, adding that an issue has arisen as to why the selection of firms had been conducted without a specification document. (Newswire)
