Committee on Foreign Affairs of Parliament has proposed a ten-year duration period after which a Ghanaian passport should be renewed.
The proposal is one of the many ways the Committee puts forward before the Director of Passports, Mr. Alexander Ntrakwa, when he appeared before them.
Ranking Member of the Committee, Hon. Samuel Okudzeto-Ablakwa, in an interaction with the media explained that the five-year expiring period of Ghana’s passports was too short a time, especially given the challenges that applicants go through before getting a new passport or renewing an old one.
Among other proposals the committee made, he said, were the relocation of the passport office from its current place and the opening of regional offices so as to help reduce the pressure on the Accra office.
Throwing more light on the proposal, Hon. Ablakwa opined that the Committee was not impressed with the reason given by the Director of Passports as to why passports must be valid for only five years.
According to the South Tongu lawmaker, the fact that passport department wants to increase its internally generated funds should not be the basis for the five years duration period for renewals.
The current fee for a new Ghanaian biometric passport booklet is Ghc100.00.
However, the process is fraught with corruption with middle men collecting as high as GHC500 from applicants before they can secure passports.
According to Hon. Ablakwa, in 2016 alone, as many as 222,000 passports were issued to Ghanaians across the country but under very torrid conditions.
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