Embassies Rip Off Ghanaians

GHANAIANS ABROAD who have applied for dual citizenship are said to be losing their hard-earned cash to the country’s embassies without any returns.

Member of Parliament (MP) for Manhyia, Dr. Matthew Opoku Prempeh yesterday informed Parliament he had received complaints from Ghanaians in London that they had paid £120 as processing fee per person to the country’s embassy in United Kingdom (UK) to acquire dual citizenship for their children but the requests had been refused.

According to him, after paying the various sums of money, embassy officials indicated they had received a directive from the Ministry of Interior not to grant dual citizenship to the applicants.

Dr. Opoku Prempeh noted that what added insult to injury was that the embassy failed to refund the monies to the applicants, leaving them in double agony.

Consequently, the lawmaker quizzed the Minister of Interior, Dr. Benjamin Kunbuor, to comment on the damning case of possible fraud carried out by the Ghana embassy in UK but the Minister indicated he needed time to investigate the matter before reporting back to the Parliament.

“I do not want to lie to this august House. I will want to investigate the matter and report back to you,” Dr. Kunbuor told Parliament.

Earlier, Dr. Opoku Prempeh asked the Minister for Interior why it was taking more than 6 months for dual citizenship applicants to be processed and why people under 18 years of age were being refused citizenship status.

However, answering the question, Dr. Kunbuor indicated that citizenship applicants received by the ministry were dealt with timeously when the relevant documents were submitted for processing.

He said where an applicant failed to provide the necessary documentation, the ministry had to write back or call applicants to provide the needed documents or information for the appropriate action to be taken on the applications.

According to Dr. Kunbuor, some of the delays were due to the fact that applicants were not resident in Ghana, pointing out that in such case, it took a longer time for the ministry to get a reply from them to enable it to work on their applications.

“In some instances, the applicants fail to respond on time or even fail to provide the requested information,” the Minister observed.

He indicated that where reliable contact numbers were not provided by applicants, the ministry, apart from writing, had to wait on applicants to follow up on their applications, before the ministry asks for the needed documentation and this also leads to delays in the processing of applications.

Touching on why people under 18 years of age were being refused citizenship status, Dr. Kunbuor pointed out that citizenship status in Ghana was regulated by Article 6 of the 1992 Constitution and by the Citizenship Act 2000, Act 591.

According to him, nobody had ever been refused citizenship status by the ministry since that status was conferred by the 1992 Republican Constitution.