Maldives creates honorary colour and medal for immigration officers

Immigration officers in the Maldives are to be awarded an honorary colour and an honorary medal under a regulation issued by the Civil Service Commission and published in the Government Gazette as Regulation 2026/R-91 on 2 November 2026. The award is created by a new Article 9 inserted into the Immigration Officers Regulation (2013/R-57), and is conferred by a committee chaired by the Controller General of Immigration. The regulation took effect on the day of its publication.

The instrument is the third amendment to the 2013 regulation governing immigration officers, and it was gazetted by the Civil Service Commission in Malé in issue No. 162 of Volume 55 of the Government Gazette, dated 2 November 2026, corresponding to 22 Jumada al-Ula 1448. The amendment follows the standard gazette format for the insertion of a single new article: the operative text adds Article 9 immediately after Article 8 of the parent regulation, without altering any other provision.

What the new article provides

Article 9 is built on three limbs, set out in the gazetted text:

• Limb (a) states that immigration officers shall be given an honorary colour and an honorary medal, as a symbol of honour and in appreciation of the work of the officers, in accordance with the rules referred to in limb (b).
• Limb (b) states that the honorary colour and medal shall be awarded by a committee established and run within Maldives Immigration, chaired by the Controller General of Immigration.
• Limb (c) states that the rules on the conferral of the honorary colour and medal set out in limb (a) must be formulated and published in the Government Gazette of the Maldives within 30 (thirty) days of the publication of this regulation in the Government Gazette.

The structure places the operational detail outside the regulation itself: Article 9 establishes the honour and the awarding body, while the eligibility criteria, the selection process and the manner of conferral are left to a separate set of rules that the committee and the commission must still publish.

Thirty-day deadline for the award rules

The only deadline written into the amendment is the 30-day period in limb (c). Measured from the publication date, that window closes on 2 December 2026, by which point the rules governing the award must appear in the Government Gazette.

The text published on 2 November does not name any recipient, prescribe the design or form of the colour and medal, or set out criteria, ranks or quotas. None of those elements is fixed in the amendment; all are deferred to the rules still to be gazetted. Until those rules are published, the amendment establishes the honour and the body that grants it, but not the conditions under which any individual officer qualifies.

Immediate effect across the service

Under paragraph 2 of the amendment, the regulation applies from the day it is published in the Government Gazette — that is, from 2 November 2026 — with no transitional period or phased commencement. The change therefore binds Maldives Immigration and its officers from the date of issue, and sits within the rewards and disciplinary framework attached to the Immigration Officers Regulation (2013/R-57).

The awarding committee is anchored institutionally rather than by named membership: the gazetted text specifies only that it is a committee constituted within Maldives Immigration and chaired by the Controller General of Immigration, leaving its composition to be settled in practice.

For immigration officers, the amendment converts recognition of their work into a formal, gazette-based honour with a defined awarding authority and a published rulebook. For the wider civil service, it marks the extension of the Civil Service Commission’s honours architecture to a uniformed, front-line service, with the practical test falling on the 30-day deadline: whether the award rules reach the Government Gazette by 2 December 2026 will determine how quickly the first honours can actually be conferred.

Source: Gazette of the Government of Maldives, No. 162, 2 November 2026, Section I (official reference: 2026/R-91).