Former Deputy Minister Questions Hon. Okudzeto Ablakwa’s Passport Reforms

Hon. Kwaku Ampratwum-Sarpong, Member of Parliament for Mampong and former Deputy Minister for Foreign Affairs, has expressed skepticism about Hon. Okudzeto Ablakwa’s plans to introduce 24-hour passport processing. Ampratwum-Sarpong claims that the current administration is not bringing anything new to the table, as similar projects are already underway.

According to Ampratwum-Sarpong, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs has been working on a project funded by the World Bank to improve passport services, including digitization and clearing backlogs of unclaimed passports ¹. The project, which has been ongoing for two years, has made significant progress in reducing the number of unclaimed passports.

Ampratwum-Sarpong also highlighted that the Consular Fund, aimed at supporting Ghanaians in diaspora, is already set up and ready to go. However, the fund is awaiting seed money of $2 million from the Ministry of Finance to become operational.

The former Deputy Minister noted that the NPP government had planned to allocate the $2 million to the Consular Fund in the next budget, as part of their manifesto pledge.

It remains to be seen how Hon. Okudzeto Ablakwa will respond to these claims and whether his committee will be able to bring about significant improvements to passport services.

Read Below the full text by the former deputy foreign affairs minister

Hon. Kwaku Ampratwum-Sarpong, MP, Mampong and Former Deputy Minister for Foreign Affairs writes….

Hon. Okudzeto Ablakwa’s committee to bring in 24hours passport processing is a red herring

1. Unclaimed passports. There already a project which has been in operation in the last 2 years funded by the World Bank. The Ministry of Foreign Affairs received funding from the World Bank under a Public Sector Reform for reforms program. The passport office was identified as a key area for improvement and modernization. Amongst the internal reforms apart from digitization was sorting out backlogs and nearly 40000 uncollected passports. The passport office has since then been divising and using every means possible including call centres, courier services, postal and visitations where possible . Some progress have been made and the numbers have reduced. There are still challenges because of wrong contact numbers, changed and wrong addresses, wrong and fake information provided at the application stages etc. By and large the project is already 2 years and ongoing so the Minister is not coming to do anything new. No reinventing of the wheel. The wheel is already invented.

2. Consular funded to help and assist Ghanaians in diaspora in welfare and critical exigencies.

3. The Consular fund. It is already set up and ready to go. Again no reinventing of the wheel.

4. Modalities for operationalisation of the fund is ready and in place. The only outstanding matter is for the seed money of $2m to be made available from Ministry of Finance into the external operation accounts of the Consular Fund.

5. Praying that the Minister, Ablakwa, is able to convince his colleague the Finance Minister to release the funds.

6. The Npp government if we had won the 2024 elections was going put the $2m money into the Consular fund in the next budget. This was manifesto pledge.