Kwaku Ampratwum-Sarpong writes: Ablakwa’s committee to bring in 24-hour passport processing is a red herring

1. Unclaimed passports. There already is a project which has been in operation in the last two years funded by the World Bank. The Ministry of Foreign Affairs received funding from the World Bank under a Public Sector Reform for reforms programme. The passport office was identified as a key area for improvement and modernisation. Amongst the internal reforms apart from digitisation 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 two 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.