138,067 Biometric Passports Issued Nationwide - Kpodo

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Created on Thursday, 30 June 2011 00:00

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138,067 Biometric Passports Issued Nationwide - Kpodo

issued nationwide since April, 2010, the Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs and Regional Integration, Mr Chris Kpodo has announced.

According to him 75,912 out of the number were issued under the express system while the remaining 62,155 were issued under the regular system.

“Since April, 2010, the Passport Office had issued an average of 10,620 passports a month for the whole period and had reached a peak of 17,305 passports in March, 2011”, he said.

Answering a question in Parliament yesterday, the Deputy Minister added that during the period 444 diplomatic passports were issued in addition to 142 service passports.

The Member of Parliament (MP) for Agona East, Mr John Agyabeng who asked the question wanted to know the current state of the implementation of the Biometric Passport Project.

Mr Kpodo explained that the 444 diplomatic passports issued included some MPs who had applied under the new system adding that Cabinet had given approval that MPs should be issued with diplomatic passports.

He told the House that the Passport Office is finding it difficult to reach out to 666 people whose passports are ready for collection and said that the situation had confirmed the speculation that some people rush for passports even though they did not need them.

Mr Kpodo stated that Biometric Passport Application Centre had been established for Greater Accra, Ashanti, Brong Ahafo, Western region and the Northern Region and said that since those centres were currently operational, there was no longer the need for people to travel to Accra to process their passport forms.

He added that the country’s diplomatic missions had also been provided with the standard lists of equipment required for them to process biometric passports explaining that once those equipment had been procured the project company, Buck Press would visit the mission for the installation and training of the staff to enable them start the processing of the biometric passport.

He said during the initial stages, the diplomatic mission would only collect data and send them electronically to Accra for the issuance of the passports until the time that they would get all the equipment required to issue the passports themselves.

Mr Kpodo said in the early part of this year, the issuance of the biometric passports was characterised by considerable delays and huge backlog due to various operational constraints and stated that the passport issuing procedures had since been streamlined ; with additional equipment streamlined as well.

He stated that the measures had greatly enhanced the productive capacity of the Passport Office and had enabled it to clear the previous backlog and to issue new passports within the stipulated deadlines, except in cases where there were problems with specific applications submitted.

He explained when answering a question about the period it took for one to be issued with a biometric passport that currently it took three days for the issuance of an express passport and 15 days for the issuance of an ordinary passport.

On the issue of foreigners obtaining Ghanaian passport, Mr Kpodo gave the assurance that with the Biometric Passport system in place such situations would be curtailed.

Source: The Daily Graphic/Ghana, 30 June 2011