Tanzania is at the final stages of carrying out physical verification on those who deserve to be granted citizenship as promised by the president.
Tanzania is set to offer citizenship to more Burundian refugees in the country by the end of this year, a senior official said yesterday.
Tanzania’s deputy home affairs minister Hamad Yusuf Masauni said the government in collaboration with UNHCR is at the final stages of carrying out physical verification on those who deserve to be granted citizenship as promised by the president.
‘‘It is our plan that the process is complete by the end of this year so that those refugees who merit nationality be granted in accordance with the law,” the minister said when speaking in Tanzania’s capital city of Dodoma.
Tanzania previously granted naturalisation to some 32,000 Rwandan refugees in 1982 and in February of this year it concluded the naturalisation of some 3,000 Somali Bantu refugees (ethnic Wazigua from Tanzania), who had fled Somalia in 1991, after the fall of the Siad Barre regime.
Meanwhile, eight lions and 25 elephants have been killed in “human-wildlife conflict” outside a sanctuary in northern Tanzania since last year, authorities said yesterday.
The eight lions were speared to death by villagers after they strayed out of the Ngorongoro Conservation Area, a UNESCO World Heritage Site. (Xinhua)