Passport office to overhaul operations

The Director of Passports, Alexander Grant Ntrakwa, has revealed that the office will soon upgrade its system to address challenges being encountered by the Office in issuing passports.

Mr Ntrakwa, who was speaking on Class FM’s Executive Breakfast Show, told Ekow Mensah-Shalders on Tuesday April 19 that the new system would eliminate human elements and other security concerns.

“In December, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs [and Regional Integration] came out with an advert indicating expressions of interest for interested vendors for the extension of biometric passports abroad and revamping the whole passport architecture in Ghana,” he disclosed.

According to him, about twenty-six companies applied and processes have already commenced for the necessary evaluation and tender.

Mr Ntrakwa said the vendor would work with the Ministry “to design a new architecture for us and we hope that some of the security issues we talked about will be captured in the contract and also make sure that all those human elements currently at play will be eliminated”.

Currently, Ghana’s missions abroad in several countries issue the old machine readable passports.

On 29 March 2016, the Foreign Affairs and Regional Integration Ministry issued a press release indicating that the Ministry was making efforts to address shortage of machine readable passport booklets.

The statement also indicated that the ministry was making efforts to have biometric passports issued as biometric passport booklets were in abundance.

Mr Ntrakwa assured citizens that Ghana’s High Commissions in six locations will start issuing the biometric passports by the end of April.

He said logistics and equipment have been provided and installed for the process to begin.

“London, Washington, New York, Berlin, Abuja, and Pretoria should be issuing biometric passports by the end of this month. As we speak, we have technicians on the ground in London and Pretoria. The connectivity with the head office has already been established and they have acquired and installed the software,” he explained.

He further noted that “it was left with synchronisation of the software and printing machines” and hopefully Ghanaians in the Missions should get the biometric passports soon.