A passport is the only universally accepted travel and reliable document for identification of Ghanaians who travel abroad.
Applying for one has never been easy in Ghana considering the ordeal people went through, Ghanaians used to sleep at the passport office overnight before they can submit their application forms with an 80% of they not getting the passport. Other resort to middlemen popularly called “Gooro Boys” who extorted huge sums of money from these people.
However, the government woke up to the call to ensure an efficient and easy acquisition of the document is realised. Through the National Information Technology, the government introduced the biometric systems and online passport application.
Below are the facts:
1. In 2014 the ministry of Foreign affairs and Regional integration introduced the biometric systems and online passport application in line with Ghana’s government E-Governance strategy. In the ministry Medium-term development plan document of 2014 – 2017 the ministry indicated they will extend the biometric and online passport application centres to all regional capital on page 37 – 53 .
2. The ministry also clearly spelt out in their 2016 – 2018 programme based budget estimates document on page 39 that they will extend the biometric passport issuing system to the regional capitals, this was after the Minister, Madam Hannah Tettey officially launched both biometric and the online passport application on December 20, 2016.
3. Again on the same PBB document also called the medium-term expenditure framework document for 2018 – 2021 states on page 32 – 34 that the ministry will extend the online passport application to all the regional capital.
All these facts meant the biometric and online passport application in existed before the Nana Akuffo-Addo led government.
Read the link https://www.graphic.com.gh/news/general-news/online-passport-application-launched.html
In conclusion, the online passport application is never the handiwork of his President Nana Akuffo-Addo as he claims on his Facebook page as one of his government’s achievements but former president John Dramani Mahama.
President Nana Akuffo Addo rather delayed the process and still hasn’t fully implemented this project to the regional capital as initially stipulated.
It is therefore false for the President to tout it as his achievement.
Read what President Akufo-Addo posted on his Facebook page:
