Credible Information available to the Daily Heritage reveals that Ghana�s national passport office is reeling under intense pressure from millions of applicants due to shortage of passport booklets.
The situation is so precarious that currently there are only 10 booklets serving the whole country and each booklet contains 32 leaflets, thus, only 320 leaflets are currently serving the millions of applicants nationwide.
The shortage has compelled the authorities to put some considerations on who to serve first based on specific criteria.
Those being considered include applicants with return tickets and those with urgent medical needs. Other applicants who are feeling the effect of the shortage are beside themselves with anger over long delays.
According to sources, new applicants seeking passport are being required to justify their applications on grounds of emergency or be prepared to wait for a long while.
This has brought heavy traffic at the department as applicants who submitted their application forms as of January this year have still not received their processed passports.
One of the workers who agreed to speak on condition of anonymity with the paper said before the shortage, there was a management meeting to resolve the situation, but there was lack of commitment on the part of the bodies responsible for supplying the booklets.
�We continuously receive threatening text messages from angry applicants whose passports are still not processed, exposing our lives to danger,� the source said.
Checks by the paper revealed that there are over one million applications stuck at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs awaiting processing, while an average of 600 passport application forms are sold a day.
Some applicants the paper spoke to expressed surprise at the development and urged government to intervene quickly to avert any major hiccup and save the nation further embarrassment in the eyes of the international community.
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