Acquiring a passport in Ghana is a nightmare
Be at the passport processing centre between the hours of 6:00am and 8:30am else your application would not be accepted.
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That was what I was told when I arrived around 11:00am at the passport processing centre (located on the old Ministry of Foreign Affairs building and just behind PMMC ) in Accra and was turned away.
I have heard horrific stories of the torture people have to go through before acquiring a new passport. People have to queue for hours before they are attended to. At any rate, you know what they say, you never really know how bad something is until you actually experience it.
If you are reading my article, I hope you will not have to apply for a new passport anytime soon. But you just might have to get your passport ready because at the rate at which things are deteriorating in Ghana, you may have to consider a voluntary economic exile.
I was extremely angered by the lack of professional responsibility on the part of the Ministry of the Interior, under whose arm passport applications fall. How do you expect old men, old women and the rest of the populace to start forming queues by 6:00am just to get a passport?
And most annoyingly, turn people away after 8.30am. Can you imagine all the man hours that are lost just because people, who are paid with tax payers funds, lack the professional capacity to carry on their assigned duties or are just negligent?
My questions to the Minister of the Interior are:
(1) What is the bottleneck in the passport application procedure that is causing such long queues at the processing centres ?
(2) Why is it that the bottleneck has not been removed for over three years now? How much money would be required to ensure that a few more processing centres are opened nationwide?
If the minister had been proactive, I am sure he would have made life a lot easier for passport applicants. What further annoys me is the fact that the good people of Ghana are made to pay for these passports.
Regular and express processing cost GH¢50.00 and GH¢100.00 respectively.
Now, it appears nothing works in Ghana. There is a constant interruption of water supply, persistent lack of gas for cooking (people have been known to bribe gas attendants so that they would be attended to when a consignment arrives), and the only action that seems to be coming from the government is the renaming of facilities and the organisation of pilgrimage for pastors.
Seriously, nothing appears to work in Ghana anymore and that is why I feel it is necessary to get my travel documents in order. They frustrate us when we try hard to cope in Ghana and when we try to leave this God-forsaken country, the government frustrates us too.
By the way, if you think I am being political in my write-up, think again. I just want to have a decent standard of living. Basic necessities such as constant power, water, gas, etc are not too much to ask.
So Mr Minister, be active on the job and start facilitating the rapid processing of passport applications so that people like us who have had enough can leave.
By Kwame Boateng
Dansoman, Accra
[email protected]
