GIS drafts strategic plan for next five years
The Ghana Immigration Service (GIS) has begun the process to review its strategic plan for 2011-2015 and draft a new one for 2016-2020.
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The strategic plan is intended to enable the service to carry out its mission and vision effectively to reposition the service to enable it to render better services to the public as well as empower the GIS to meet emerging global challenges of migration.
In an address read on his behalf at the opening session of the review process in Accra, the Minister of the Interior, Mr Prosper Bani, said performance reports obtained from the GIS and verified by the ministry indicated an encouraging and above average performance.
He assured the GIS that the ministry would ensure that the necessary tools, equipment and resources required to facilitate the smooth implementation of the strategic plan would be made available to support the Service.
Migration
Mr Bani said international migration was now an inherent and integral part of the globalisation process and that it seemed far more likely to expand than contracting in the coming years.
Whilst positive migration may present a medium to long-term solutions to some contemporary challenges faced by developing and developed economies alike, the true benefit of migration could be derived by putting the requisite structures, law and implementation frameworks in place as well as building the capacities and capabilites of relevant state institutions involved in its management.
He underscored the fact that the long term survival of an organisations depended on sound strategic planning that clearly defined objectives and access to both the internal and external situation to formulate strategy, implement the strategy, evaluate the progress and make adjustments where necessary to stay on track.
“Formulating and destination agenda enables an institution to muster available resources to attain optimal performance as well as find new and different ways to achieve successs”, he said
The minister indicated that the GIS had over the years collaborated with members of the European Union (EU) and other international organisations to implement some of the activities in the strategic plan.
Emerging challenges
The Director of Immigration, Mr Felix Yaw Sarpong, said the development of the plan was a systematic process of envisioning a desired future, and translating this vision into broadly defined goals or objectives and a sequence of steps to achieve them.
He said the plan was to meet the emerging global challenges of migration management, such as irregular migration, migrant smuggling, and reposition the service for a greater service delivery in line with best practices.
The Director indicated that the service recorded major achievements, including the review of GIS laws and policies, which led to the development of comprehensive standard operating procedures and the drafting of an HR policy and the passage of the Immigration amendment Act 2012 (Act 848).