Maldives to Track Foreigners Travelling by Sea Under Maldives 2.0 Digital Plan

The government will introduce a system to monitor foreigners boarding and disembarking vessels across the country once the Maldives 2.0 digital transformation programme is complete, Internal Security, Labour and Technology Minister Ali Ihsan said.

Speaking on a state media programme, Ihsan said tracking the movement of expatriates through the country’s sea transport network has been a persistent challenge. The new system, he said, will be able to identify foreigners at each point of embarkation and disembarkation, closing a gap that authorities say has allowed undocumented workers to move between islands without detection.

The minister also said the government aims to deport all illegal foreigners before 17 November this year, the deadline set for the third phase of Operation Kurangi. Work is ongoing to help foreigners who registered under the operation’s earlier phases come into compliance with existing regulations.

Ihsan added that by the end of the current government term, the Maldives aims to be recognised internationally as one of the best countries for the treatment of foreign workers.

Maldives 2.0 is President Dr Mohamed Muizzu’s national digital transformation agenda, built around eight pillars covering digital identity, data governance, cybersecurity, sovereign digital infrastructure and citizen-facing public services. The programme is designed to digitise key sectors including health, education, tourism, justice and trade, and to bring all state institutions onto a unified digital platform. The sea transport tracking system for foreigners would sit within the programme’s digital identity and data-sharing framework.

The broader context is significant. The Maldives has an estimated 200,000 foreign nationals currently in the country, a large portion of them in the informal economy. Authorities have struggled to monitor movement across an archipelago of more than 1,000 islands connected almost entirely by sea. A working tracking system would represent a meaningful shift in the state’s ability to manage that population.