Opinion: The intended increase in passport fees justified

The Ministry of Foreign Affairs has sent a memorandum to Parliament, praying the Legislative arm of Government to allow it to increase fees charged for the acquisition of passports from GHS100/150 to GHS644.

There is every justification for this notification to Parliament. We are no strangers to the challenges at the passport offices across the country.

Oftentimes, we are very critical of the entity, accusing them of delays in passport processing and acquisition. Many a time, a passport application that is supposed to take about a month to process and complete takes months if not years to do so.

We pour our anger and frustrations on the Minister for Foreign Affairs and her ministry for poor services. We have not averted our minds to the causal factors accounting for these myriad challenges faced by the passport office.

Applicants pay GHS100 and GHS150 depending upon the type of service one requires. The truth is that, these fees are woefully inadequate for the operational costs of these passports.

For GHS100 paid by an applicant, the Ministry would have to find GHS300 more to be able to complete or print the passport. For the GHS150 one, the Ministry adds GHS300 to it in order to get one his or her passport. The state, through the Foreign Affairs Ministry, subsidizes passports at the cost of GHS300 per passport. This is unacceptable. This must not continue.

Today, passports are manually printed in Ghana. This has come about because there is no money to invest in the system for improved services.

The state cannot continue to subsidize passport acquisition for people who can easily pay GHS1000, GHS2000 and GHS3000 for same.

Any Ghanaian applying for a passport is for traveling purposes. Traveling outside costs huge sums of money.

Are we saying that we can afford to pay huge sums of monies for traveling purposes but cannot afford to pay the right cost for passport?

If you ask me, with the promise of efficient, instant or fast deliveries, the asking price of GHS644 is not abnormal.

It is worth emphasizing the fact that the Foreign Affairs Ministry is moving biometric passport to chip embedded ones (a requirement from ICAO) from April 2024.

Chip embedded passports, let us not forget, are more expensive to produce and issue than the ones we are used to.

Folks, let us embrace this decision. It is the best way out of the countless challenges we face in the acquisition or renewal of passports. The increased fees would help the Ministry to acquire the necessary technology to fast-track passport acquisition.

This opinion piece is written by P.K. Sarpong, of “Whispers from the Corridors of the Thinking Place”.

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