In what is expected to significantly reduce pushing paper work and lodging visa applications for most, the Immigration and Citizenship Authority has introduced an online payment portal which allows clients and individuals to pay for visa, passport, citizenship and other migration penalty fees using an account in the ICA website.
This new online product was launched today in the midst of business council stakeholders and relevant government agencies during a Business Council Meeting.
Linking up with government agencies and relevant stakeholders, the Immigration and Citizenship Authority is one of the first government agencies to utilize the digital platform to reduce the manual lodging of paper work and improve the transparency of public money and advance client satisfaction.
Theoretically meant to be user friendly, the online payment portal is mainly aimed and targeted to investing clients and individuals predominant in the region.
Solomon Kantha the Chief Migration Officer says “One of the things that we have on the website is the multi lingual language selection. Because of our client are predominantly in the region. We try to target specific group of clients.”
Since the availability of the online service, many complaints have been met and challenges reduced to a minimum.
In turn, the use of the online service has seen many happy returns with a significant increase of revenue in the area of collecting Visa fees.
“One of the benefits of the online payment service is that it has significantly reduced paper based applications. People don’t have to turn with bulks to lodges their applications. That was one of the products that promoted the service”
This however is a limited option only available for clients and individuals who have an active Master or Visa banking card; leaving out the bulk of Papua New Guinea’s population who don’t necessarily own a Visa banking card, but have to stand in line to lodge their applications manually at the immigration office.
Plans to domesticate the online payment service to have it more localised for Kundu card users is still a work in progress and technical experts say this should be expected around next year 2020.
By Annette Kora, EMTV News, Port Moresby
