730 Apply For Dual Citizenship

A TOTAL of 730 people applied for dual citizenship last year, out of which 495 were processed and submitted to the Interior Ministry for issuance of dual citizenship.

About 297 applications, including some from the previous year could not be processed due to certain reasons.

The addresses of 191 applicants could not be traced, while 52 of them had contact numbers of close relatives or representatives which were found to be non-existent.

The Public Relations Officer of the Ghana Immigration Service (GIS), Deputy Superintendent of Immigration (DSI), Mrs Maud Quainoo, made this known in Accra.

She said the problem with some of the applicants domiciled outside Ghana was that they either provided wrong contact addresses of their representatives in Ghana or never discussed the issue with them.

DSI Quainoo said in such circumstances, it was difficult to contact the guarantors in cases of wrong contact numbers.

She said the service usually wrote back to the applicants for further clarifications but never got any response from them.

She said there were occasions that their representatives were contacted but they declined to show up for the interview or came at their own convenience.

Recently, Ghanaians in Canada called on Ghana?s Ministry of the Interior to expedite action on the processing of Dual Citizenship applications submitted so far, reports Dornu Adjorkatcher.

According to those Ghanaians some of whom are naturalised Canadians, the snail-pace at which the applications were being processed accounted for the seeming waned interest in the submission of more applications.

They made the call at a Dual Citizenship information session organised by the Ghanaian Association of Ottawa, which attracted Ghanaians from neighbouring cities, including Montreal and Toronto, and was partly sponsored by the City of Ottawa.

Ghana?s High Commissioner to Canada, Mr Arthur Samuel Odoi-Sykes, said that for the period of March 2003 to March 2005, a total of 805 applications were submitted to the Ministry of the Interior in Accra and out of this number, 435 applications were vetted and 260 certificates issued.

He said in the case of Canada, 40 applications were submitted and seven certificates issued.

That, however, did not include people in Canada who presented their applications directly to the Ministry of the Interior in Accra.