Heads of State of the five East African Community partners yesterday signed the protocol on the establishment of the East African Common Market.
The United Nations refugee agency today condemned the latest xenophobic attacks that have driven some 3,000 foreigners, including refugees and asylum-seekers from Zimbabwe, from a community in South Africa.
A newspaper claim that a Nigerian has faked a marriage with his daughter to secure a United Kingdom visa for her has sparked renewed debate for immigration control in the country.
South African refugee rights group, PASSOP, has slammed local government officials for their handling of this week's outbreak of xenophobic violence near Cape Town, which saw more than 3000 foreigners, mainly Zimbabweans, flee their homes.
Farmers in De Doorns have rejected allegations that they are paying Zimbabwean immigrants lower than the minimum wage and are therefore responsible for the xenophobic attacks that erupted in the region this week.
Ms. Betty Bosomtwi-Sam, the Western Regional Deputy Minister, has called on the Ghana Police Service and its allied security agencies to step up efforts in the fight against human trafficking.
The number of Zimbabweans displaced after some of their shacks in an informal settlement outside De Doorns, a farming town about 140km from Cape Town, South Africa, were attacked and demolished by local South African residents, has risen to about 3,000, said the South African Red Cross Society.
Local farmworkers in De Doorns jeered and shouted obscenities this morning as they drove past a rugby field that has become the temporary home of nearly 2 500 Zimbabweans chased from the town's informal settlements.
Nigeria is the sixth highest destination of remittances from its citizens living in the Diaspora. According to the World Bank Migration and Development brief released recently, Nigeria, with $10bn remittance from its citizens abroad, came after Inida ($52bn), China ($49bn) and Mexico ($25bn).
Cabinet has expressed its deep concern about the spate of attacks on foreign nationals at De Doorns in the Boland.
Xenophobic violence has once again reared its head in South Africa, after more than a thousand Zimbabwean migrants were driven from their homes in a rural settlement in the country on Tuesday.
THE government expressed its concern yesterday about the growing perception that Pretoria is limiting the number of Nigerian nationals wanting to visit SA for business and tourism purposes.
Fearing a resurgence of xenophobic attacks, around 2,500 Zimbabwean migrants have taken refuge in government buildings in De Doorns, a farming town about 140km from Cape Town, South Africa, after some of their shacks in an informal settlement were attacked and demolished, said a police official.
A 24 year-old Zimbabwean man has been languishing inside an immigration detention centre in Portsmouth for over a year, awaiting deportation.
Up to 2700 Zimbabwean asylum seekers have set up a temporary "safety camp" in a rural South African town following attacks on their shacks in a dispute over jobs.
