Deputy minister of foreign affairs and regional integration, Kwaku Ampratwum-Sarpong, has expressed the need to increase passport application fees.
According to him, the current charges do not reflect the growing demands of the passport offices across the country. He revealed that issues such as shortage of raw materials and equipment, have rendered it necessary to increase passport fees.
Mr Ampratwum-Sarpong indicated that Ghanaian passports happen to be the cheapest in the whole West Africa region, hence the need to review it.
“Ghana passport cost $8, the next cheapest is Liberia, it’s $40. The supplier for Liberia passports and Ghana passports is one company… So, our passports are heavily subsidized. The monies that we are supposed to use to buy the computers and printers to be able to provide quick service delivery, is being used to subsidize the passports people apply for…”
Kwaku Ampratwum-Sarpong
Justifying the need to increase the passport fees, Mr Ampratwum-Sarpong explained that about 80% of person who apply for passports don’t really need it at the time they apply for them. This, he noted, places huge burden on limited resources of the passport office to buy equipment.
The resources, he stated, are rather being diverted to subsidize cost of passport to Ghanaians. In light of this, the deputy foreign affairs minister emphasized the need to raise the cost.
“At least, parliament is a bit sympathetic to the case of the ministry. The foreign affairs committee at various meetings that we’ve had with them, have always urged us to try and do something about the price.
“We are in consultation with the various stakeholders and hopefully, our next attempt is to engage with parliament because we on our own cannot increase passport fees. We will need the support of parliament to make it happen.”
Kwaku Ampratwum-Sarpong
Furthermore, Mr Ampratwum-Sarpong highlighted that the ministry is contemplating upgrading passport from biometric to chip embedded ones. With this, he underscored that the chip-embedded version is going to cost more.
“If we continue charging at $8, we will continue to face the problems that we are having at the passport office… So, we have to raise the fees.”
Kwaku Ampratwum-Sarpong
Ministry committed to addressing challenge with ‘goro’ boys
Commenting on the challenges of the ministry in dealing with middlemen, otherwise known as ‘goro’ boys who inflate prices of passport application fees to desperate Ghanaians, Mr Ampratwum-Sarpong revealed that although the issue has been a bane to the ministry, a lot is being done to address them.
“In my intro, I made mention of the tsunami at the passport office in August. Basically, it meant that something wasn’t going right, and the minister had to take some very hard decision… We all know the activities of the goro boys, where people were paying between GHC2,000 to GHC3,000 before they get their passports – there are challenges.
“We have challenges even with the capturing of the biometric data, and also, we have challenges when it comes to the printing of passports, and it all boils down to the issue of resources…”
Kwaku Ampratwum-Sarpong
Mr Ampratwun-Sarpong noted that some of the measures introduced by the ministry to reduce the number of unauthorized persons who were found loitering around the inner parameter of the passport office was a challenge.
Nonetheless, he confirmed that the ministry has been successful in weeding out these middlemen from the system.
“We’ve installed control measures to get into the various rooms and various printing offices and all these from what we are hearing, appears to have brought down the ‘goro’ charges. We are hearing from the grapevine that the ‘goro’ charges have come down from the GHC3,000 and GHC2,000 downward, which means that the various measures we have taken at the passport offices appears to be working.”
Kwaku Ampratwum-Sarpong
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