The centralised issuance of passports in the country has contributed to underhand dealings and corruption, the Ashanti Regional Head of Passport Office, Mr. Albert Kan Dapaah Jnr, has noted.

He said the lack of decentralisation in passport acquisition in Ghana has led to congestion and underhand dealings at Passport Application Centers (PACS).

According to him, the centralising of the head office in Accra, as the only office nationwide which issues passports, makes the process cumbersome and time consuming, and that a system failure in Accra leaves the whole nation wagging about delays in the acquisition of passports by the citizenry.

The Ashanti Regional Head of Passport stated that the process whereby only Accra issues passports has led to corruption, long queues , favouratisim and other negative practices, adding: “Let us not play the ostrich; we have created the problems ourselves.”

Mr. Kan Dapaah Jnr disclosed that there are six PACS in namely, Kumasi, Accra, Ho, Takoradi, Tamale and Sunyani.

According to him, since the process is centralised in Accra, applicants go through a lot of stress in long queues at the various PACs before they go through passport formalities.

He noted that such situations sometimes lead to underhand dealings, which see people paying money to staff at the PACS to get their way through. “Acquisition of [a] passport has been time consuming and nightmarish, a situation where people sometimes spend almost a whole day at a Passport Office.”

Mr. Kan Dapaah Jnr proffered an antidote to the problem in an interview with The Chronicle in that the government should adopt an electronic application form, where applicants can apply for passports online in a bid to get rid of “Goro boys” (unofficial agents) from hijacking the system.

He explained that with the electronic application, people can sit in the comfort of their bedrooms and apply for a passport, which is the only way to stop the corruption which has characterised passport acquisition procedures in Ghana.

The Regional Head for Passport noted that driving the “goro boys” away without putting in place lasting solutions to the congestion and underhand dealings will only go to aggravate the problem, because they will go and come back in grand style.

Mr. Kan Dapaah advised the public to stop going to the Immigration Unit for passports, cautioning that it is only the Biometric Passport office that is mandated to issue passports.