South Africans travelling to Eire and the UK had been reportedly pressured to fill in a questionnaire in Afrikaans to show their citizenship.
Image: Flickr Commons/ Eliane Kobayakawa
Annoyed travellers shared their experiences on Fb, Twitter and Reddit, posting photos of the Afrikaans questionnaire.
One passenger and her 11-year-old son had been refused entry after getting three out of the 15 questions improper, in response to a Fb publish in a gaggle for South Africans in London.
UK blocking South Africans at airports except they go Afrikaans check…… go or else!??. pic.twitter.com/t2ziFCXn0A
— NaTiki Nation. (@JrNatiki) June 3, 2022
In one other incident, a South African travelling from Eire to the UK was informed that the Irish authorities had launched the Afrikaans check due to a rise in fraudulent South African passports.
However the British Excessive Fee in South Africa posted that the questionnaire was not a requirement of the UK authorities. The Irish Embassy acknowledged in a response to Day by day Maverick: ‘We’re glad to make clear that the Irish immigration authorities don’t beneath any circumstances require or administer such assessments to passengers travelling to Eire.’
It turned out that the check was a requirement of the low-cost airline, Ryanair, which mentioned that, ‘beneath Part 40 of the UK Immigration and Asylum Act 1999, Ryanair has a accountability to make sure that passengers are appropriately documented for journey to their vacation spot.
‘As a result of latest enhance in passengers making an attempt to journey on fraudulent South African passports, our dealing with brokers could request passengers travelling on a South African passport and who’re flagged throughout procedural safety profiling, to finish a easy questionnaire, as an extra security evaluation to verify whether or not they’re appropriately documented earlier than journey. As language proficiency is the least intrusive additional security evaluation technique, this questionnaire is carried out by means of Afrikaans, one in every of South Africa’s most prevalent official languages.’
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