President Dr. Muizzu has ordered that the issue of foreigners living illegally in the Maldives be fully resolved by 17 November, bringing forward the deadline set earlier, Minister of Homeland Security and Technology Ali Ihusaan has said.
Speaking at a press conference, the minister said the work had originally been planned for completion by 2 May next year. Following the President’s instruction to speed it up, authorities are now working towards the new date, he said.
When the current government took office, state records showed 295,000 foreigners living in the Maldives, but fingerprints had been taken from only 22,000 of them. Under the operation launched by the government, information on more than 260,000 foreigners has since been identified.
The minister said only one percent of the entire foreign population, or more than 800 people, remain without biometric data. Some of them have died, and in some cases even the parties who brought them to the Maldives do not know their whereabouts, so it cannot be confirmed that all of them are still in the country, he noted.
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