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| IMO to build brain-drain database on SADC
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From Lewis Mwanangombe
PANA Correspondent
Lusaka, Zambia (PANA) -
The International Organisation for
Migration, or IMO, is to build a comprehensive data-base on the
numbers of professionals and other skilled workers who have left
Southern Africa for other parts of the world due to poor economic
opportunities in their own home countries.
John Tesha, IMO representative in Southern Africa, said in
Lusaka Tuesday that there is need for the region to know how many
skilled workers in general are out of the region even though he
admitted that a little of this information could be available
with organisations like the World Bank.
Tesha is leading an IMO team to the 37th OAU summit in
Zambia to unofficially lobby for support for a long held view
that the forthcoming African Union will not succeed without a
free movement of people across the borders.
"I think the IMO is trying to develop, at Southern Africa
level, a database for those in the Diaspora so that we know how
many engineers we have," Tesha said.
As part of its activities in Southern Africa, the IMO has
launched a programme known as the Migration Dialogue for Southern
Africa Forum and the Migration for Development in Africa.
Under the Dialogue, the IMO will try to foster regional co-
operation on migration-related issues in the sub-region based on
priorities expressed in preparatory gatherings of the Southern
African Development Community (SADC).
Tesha explained that the main thrust of the project is to
gain political goodwill from regional leaders so that mechanisms
can be put in place to reduce the flow of the brain-drain to the
developed north at the expense of member countries of SADC.
The Dialogue project is expected to cost 581,190 US dollars
during its initial phase that will mainly formulate strategies
for arresting problems created by migration and pay for research
and the gathering of information on migration and harmonisation
of immigration laws.
As part of the organisation's preparation for the summit,
the IMO held a four-day workshop in Lusaka at which participants
from all 14-member states of SADC looked at such issues as the
SADC free trade protocol and its implications for regional
migration.
The workshop also studied such pertinent questions as the
border management and regional integration of standards and
procedures as well as facilitation of cross-border movements and
border management in the era of the HIV and AIDS scourge.
It is this workshop, Tesha explained, that came up with
policy recommendations that would now be presented unofficially
to the summit next week.
"Free movement of the people, capital and the right of
settlement are the key. If you want an African community, it must
be a community of the people.
"We are not saying close the borders. What we are saying is
we need to devise a new system of management across boundaries
within the continent," Tesha added.
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| Lusaka - 03/07/2001 |
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