The Southern African Development Community’s bid to establish a single visa (UniVisa) for tourists visiting the region has gathered pace and is now being looked at by immigration officials, police, home and foreign affairs departments as well as judicial officers in the SADEC block, Mirror has established.

The UniVisa concept is expected to facilitate the free movement of people within the region as well as boost tourist arrivals as it will also result in a free flow of tourists visiting SADEC member countries. The idea of a single visa was mooted after it was realised that the SADEC region was among the most preferred tourist destinations in the world.

An inter-ministerial committee representing SADEC member states is currently working on how to optimize the benefits for the tourism industry.

The Regional Tourism Organization of Southern Africa (Retosa) was initially tasked with conducting the feasibility studies. A decision was later reached at a recent ministerial conference held in Luanda, Angola, that the process should include stakeholders that have a direct influence on tourism.

According to an official from the SADEC secretariat, Mrs Eniva Mutsau, it was recommended that there should be sub-committees in areas of immigration, information systems and statistics, consular representatives (for the issuance of visas), police cooperation and judiciary cooperation to deal with the process.

"The process on the UniVisa is a bit slow, but the roles of Retosa were replaced by those of subcommittees in the hope that this will expedite the whole process of having a single visa for the SADEC region. The subcommittees will then present their findings to the (SADEC) secretariat," she added.

The nine member countries that have so far signed the protocol on free movement of citizens are South Africa, Botswana, Lesotho, the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), Mozambique, Zimbabwe, Swaziland, Namibia and Tanzania. SADEC is a regional block, comprising 14 member countries. The other member countries in the block include Zambia, Mauritius and Malawi. The proposed UniVisa, which was initially scheduled to start operating in 2008, is expected to operate like the European Schengen visa system.