NO ONE SHOULD HAVE A PASSPORT TO BEND NEW TRAVEL RULES FOR MINORS

AS THE Ghostbusters’ song goes, “There’s something strange, in the neighbourhood…”

The new legislation pertaining to people travelling with minors in or out of our country has been a long time coming. Travel and tour operators have long complained about how the restrictions will affect their business.

The point is that everyone knows about it, and I even know of people who are about to embark on a journey with minors and who long ago got their papers in order.

When a woman travelling to our country from America, with her two minors, arrives at OR Tambo International Airport without the required documentation, she should be turned away by law, like everyone else.

But no – she makes a call to the Gift of the Givers, which dispatches an envoy to the airport and, because people in the NGO are evidently acquainted with the woman, she is granted entry.

This means that anyone who is stopped at our entry points without the required papers can simply be vouched for – or does it? Is the Gift of the Givers above the law? I listened to a self-righteous spokesperson from the NGO trying to be dismissive about the whole affair, but it should not matter who the traveller is or whom she knows in the Gift of the Givers – she should have been deported.

What kind of hold does the Gift of the Givers have over our government that it can just wade in and do what it likes?

AJM