As early as 3.00AM people are lined up there in a bid to get their documents processed so that they can also own a Biometric Passport.
Kofi from Labone, a suburb of Accra, says “I came here on Monday at 900AM but I wasn’t allowed in because the security said they had already had the required number to be processed so on Tuesday I got here as early as 3.00AM” and as he spoke with me it was a quarter past 10.00AM his name has not even been called for his picture and finger prints to be taken.
On the premises are canopies mounted where people are seated according to the region they are coming from, so the canopies are tagged, Ashanti, Eastern etc, etc. before I go on let me ask, so what happened to the Local Government Service Act, where all regions are supposed to have facilities such as a passport office so that people do not have to travel all the way from Kumasi or Koforidua to process a passport.
When people like Kofi’s documents are finally collected to be vetted by an Immigration officer or the officer in charge, they will look at the birth certificate and say, “sorry, we no longer use this kind so go and get it change.”
Jane another applicant said her birth certificate was rejected because she was using the old one, so she quickly rushed to the Birth and Deaths registry and got the new one for GH¢30 which was ready in about 40minutes to an hour’s time.
There was one woman whose birth certificate was rejected, she went to get it done and when she came back, the vetting officer realized again that there was a mistake in her name; she was asked to go and swear an affidavit at the High court, that it was her name, before any processing could be done.
The woman stood there sighed and said it is my fifth time, going in and out of this place today.
One of the vetting officers or explained to me that all that was done to ensure that information gotten from an applicant was accurate, according to him, when the document is finally taken inside, they make calls to all those the applicant has mentioned as witnesses or family member and if they do not get in touch they cannot go ahead to process the application.
Eeeei, acquiring a Ghanaian passport!, yet it was in the news the other day that a Nigerian has been able to acquire the Ghanaian biometric passport and the issue was even being investigated. Oh what a process to get a passport. I learnt that once a person is born in America, the next hour or so you are given an American citizenship, it may be wrong, that’s what I heard.
Isn’t this process just another breeding ground for corruption! You see the officers shouting on people like school kids and tossing them up and down, is anybody monitoring the process? Is this how it is suppose to be? Every Ghanaian would like or wish that one acquires these things without paying any illegitimate monies to have a feeling of moving towards a better Ghana.
The power is in our hands and all we need to do is to keep talking…
Source: Hannah Awadzi
Read more from the original source:
Feature: Biometric passport wahala