NDC candidate for parliament in the Ayawaso West Wuogon constituency John Dumelo has urged the government to decentralize the passport application procedure in Ghana.
He claimed that in order to address the problem of middlemen, also known as “goro boys,” passports must be printed from each regional capital.
His remarks follow the resignation of some passport office employees by the Minister of Foreign Affairs and Regional Integration Shirley Ayorkor Botchwey for helping the “goro boys” charge between GHC 2000 and GHC 3000 for passports when standard and expedited services should only cost GHC 100 and GHC 150, respectively.
The Passport Office’s facilities are overrun with passport applicants who, in their desperation for passports, hire people who appear to be in cahoots with some of the office’s employees to expedite passport acquisition.
The Passport Office has recently encountered the difficulty of having to print a sizable quantity of passport booklets in order to meet demand.
Speaking about the development, John Dumelo said that you sometimes have to pay and “make a decision that before you obtain a passport. I believe that shouldn’t be the case.
Why not make the application and acquisition process decentralized?
He suggested that you print in Cape Coast, Kumasi, and North to avoid going through these procedures.
In a related news, the administration of President Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo has been dubbed the most corrupt since 1992 by attorney Martin Kpebu.
He claims that corruption has been a significant issue for the government and that Nana Addo is unwilling to take prompt action.
“We have always known that corruption is such a big problem in this government. This government is riddled with unparalleled corruption in our history. This is about the most corrupt administration we have seen since the 1992 Constitution,” he said on Metro TV.
His comments follow the theft case at the residence of Cecilia Dapaah, the former minister of sanitation and water resources, where corruption-related offenses involving sizable sums of money were allegedly committed.
