According to Mohamed Habib Idris, the director of the passport office, his organisation is working to eliminate a backlog of 40,000 unprinted passports.
He claimed that the limitations imposed during the COVID-19 epidemic, which prevented the importing of passport books, were to blame for the delay in issuing the travel papers.
He stated in an appearance last Tuesday on the Hard Truth television show that "we are making measures to guarantee that it gets cleared" because there are only approximately 40,000 passports still waiting to be printed.
"The problems were really brought on by the COVID-19 shutdown," he continued. And as you are aware, Ghana is not the only country that imports passport booklets; other countries as well outside of our purview. Do you know how many nations practise that? Yes. Therefore the COVID-19 limitations were the real cause of the scarcity.
He also discussed the lack of professionalism and personnel resources at the passport office as contributing factors to inefficiencies in the passport application process.
He claimed that although seconded employees at the Passport Office were only supposed to work there for six months, Mr. Idris claimed that some of them had stayed in their positions for more than a year, adding to the notion that the office was corrupt.
The length of the officers assigned to the passport office is one issue that passport offices run with. There is a propensity for over-familiarity with strangers the longer someone lives there, he added.
"The inefficiencies affect every aspect, including people, tools, and procedures. We are taking steps to rationalise the human resources we have at the passport office in terms of employees.
"You are aware that the processing and purchase of passports is handled by the passport office with the assistance of stakeholder agencies. As you are aware, there has been criticism about the quantity and quality of our staff.
It's impossible to put a number on it right now, but I can assure you that something is being done about it. We are looking into rationalising.
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