The Mpumalanga premier, Mandla Ndlovu, chaired an urgent meeting recently with the Mpumalanga Provincial Joint Operational and Intelligence Structure (ProvJOC) in response to president Cyril Ramaphosa’s call for a more coordinated and lawful approach to addressing immigration challenges across the country.

The meeting aimed to assess the state of security, law enforcement and immigration management within the province.

“The president emphasised the need for government to tackle illegal immigration, combat criminal syndicates involved in human trafficking and document fraud, and ensure that all individuals residing in the country are documented and comply with the laws of South Africa,” Ndlovu said.

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The meeting tackled the following issues:
• The economic cluster will intensify the closure of illegal and unregistered informal businesses and assess the compliance of shops to mitigate the risk of poisonous food;
• The local government sector will enforce by-law compliance and eradicate illegal land occupation;
• The security cluster will reduce border crime by intensifying search operations to identify undocumented foreign nationals;
• The education sector will conduct a 100% verification of undocumented learners at schools and embark on awareness campaigns for the enrolment of documented learners.

The meeting was attended by senior management of the provincial SAPS, led by the acting Mpumalanga police commissioner, Major General Dr Zeph Mkhwanazi; MECs, district and executive mayors, heads of provincial departments and other senior government officials.