The Director of the Passport Office, Mohammed Habib Idris has announced that his outfit is working to clear the backlog of 40,000 passports that have not been printed.
According to him, the delay in printing the travel documents was due to restrictions during the COVID-19 pandemic affecting the importation of passport booklets.
“Currently, the outstanding passports to be printed are only about 40,000, so we are working hard to clear them,” he said in an interview on the Hard Truth television show last Tuesday.
He added: “The disruption is actually a result of the COVID-19 lockdown. And you know passport booklets are not printed in Ghana, but it’s not only Ghana that imports passport booklets from outside our jurisdiction. You know how many countries do this? Yes, it is. So the shortage is a result of the COVID-19 restrictions.
He also talked about the inefficiency in the passport acquisition process related to the lack of professionalism and staff strength in the passport office.
He said that those transferred to the Passport Office should be for six months, but according to Mr. Idris, some have been in the office for more than a year, leading to the perception of corruption in the office.
“One of the problems that the passport office has is the age of the officials assigned to the passport office. The longer someone lives there, there is a tendency to become more familiar with outsiders,” he said.
“Inefficiency cuts across all levels, from personnel to equipment and processes. In terms of personnel, we are taking steps to rationalize the human resources available at the passport office.
“You know that the passport office depends on the expertise of the stakeholder agencies to process and obtain passports. You know there is feedback on the level and size of personnel that we have.
“We are looking at rationalizing, for now, it is difficult to put a number on it, but I can tell you that something has been done about it”.
Source: graphic.com.gh
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