Visa abuse: Reps seek deportation of three Hyundai expatriates

 

The House of Representatives has frowned at the flagrant abuse of expatriate quota system by foreign companies.

It asked the Minister of Interior, Gen Abdulrahman Dambazzau (retd), to apply the maximum limit in the deportation order of three workers of Hyundai Heavy Industry Ltd (HHI).

The affected expatriates are Een Soon Moon, Lee Byung Woo and Lee Yoo Jong.

The Emmanuel Okon-led Committee on Local Content also said it will invite officials of the Department of State Services (DSS), Federal Inland Revenue Service (FIRS) and the Accountant-General of the Federation (AGF) to further investigate the activities and finances of HHI since its inception in Nigeria.

If found wanting after the investigation, the House said it will recommend to the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation  (NNPC) and other appropriate authorities that HHI and its subsidiaries are not fit to operate in the nation’s oil industry.

The development followed the discovery of gross violation of the provisions of the Nigerian Oil and Gas Content Development Act, 2010 by HHI with particular reference to the requirements for the expatriate quota approval.

Committee Chairman Okon, on Friday during a meeting with officials of NIS and HHI, recalled that at its April 26, 2016 meeting with officials of HHI, it was discovered that Jong Lee, who represented the Managing Director was working in Nigeria on expired Temporary Working Permit (TWP).

He said: “He was handed over to the NIS with a request to investigate the HHI and the expatriate quota status of all the expatriates in the company.

“Upon carrying the investigation, Lee was eventually repatriated from Nigeria only to have secretly re-entered Nigeria with Subject to Registration Visa (STR) and back working in the company’s Lagos office.

“Further investigation by the Committee also yielded the fact that almost all the expatriates in the company have defective or expired visas.

“Findings of NIS confirmed that Messrs Moon Soo and Lee Jong work for two different companies even though the two are subsidiaries of South Korea-based parent company HHI.”

Okon said the decision of the Committee was not difficult to arrive at because officials of HHI had very little or no regard for the nation’s extant laws by continuing with their operations and flagrant disregard for the rules despite observations by appropriate authorities.

“If the situation is not properly addressed, it will send a bad signal to the rest of the industry and beyond because the misuse and abuse of expatriate quota is a common occurrence with companies who bring in foreigners nationals.

“The Federal Ministry of Interior and the NIS must step up in the regulation of the quota system,” Okon added.