Minister of Homeland Security and Technology Ali Ihusaan has said that the number of illegal immigrants living in the Maldives will be solved within one year.

The minister said the government had launched a one-year program to find out the full number of illegal immigrants in the country and solve the problem.

Under the program, city councils, island councils, and all police stations will be given access to a system to identify all foreigners living in the Maldives through fingerprints.

The minister said that although councils are required by law to have a registry of foreigners, he does not believe that the problem can be solved without councils having access to the database containing all foreigners.

The government aims to take the fingerprints of all foreigners in the country, put them in a relevant database and give mobile devices and fixed devices that scan their fingerprints to councils and police stations so that the database knows who every foreigner who comes to them.

The minister said many foreigners arrested in various raid operations do not have identity documents. However, biometric identification will solve the problem, he said.

There are illegal immigrants in the country and as part of the government’s program to tackle it, a special task force is operating to arrest the illegal immigrants.