Vice-president Alhaji Dr Mahamudu Bawumia yesterday paid an unannounced visit to the passport application processing centre in Accra and witnessed a long queue of people standing in the sun to have their applications processed.
He was taken round the centre by the Deputy Director of the Accra Passport Application Centre, Mr Samuel Ofosu Boateng.
“I have seen the queues here and it is clear that we need to move away from the manual form of processing passports to an online system. We also need to make sure that every region has that capability to do the online processing,” Dr Bawumia said.
Online processing
Dr Bawumia said it had become increasingly necessary to “abandon the manual system and move onto the online platform to have quicker delivery of passports across the country”, adding, “People are suffering too much just to get a passport.”
The Vice-President stated that the Foreign Affairs Minister, Ms Shirley Ayorkor Botwe, was on top of the issue, with directors at the passport office accepting the changes that the government was bringing on board.
Some of those changes, he said, had already started with the opening of one online processing centre in Accra last November.
“But we believe that if we are able to open online processing centres in every region of the country, then people can have their passports processed much quicker,” he posited.
Providing resources in time
Dr Bawumia said the government was going to hold the directors and all who had a role to play in the extension of the online processing responsible for the timely completion of the process.
“The government will also provide them with the needed resources in good time to facilitate the process,” the Vice-President said.
“I believe people must not suffer this way to get a passport and we must change that,” he maintained.
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