Prospective passport applicants can apply for passports online by the end of the year. this is because the Passport Office has introduced an electronic system to minimise the incident of passport racketeering.
Currently the Passport Office is in talks with some banks in the country for agreement on a payment platform which applicants could access to pay for the acquisition of passports online.
Speaking at a news conference on thursday, the Director of Passports, Mr Alexander Grant Ntrakwa, said the Controller and Accountant General’s Department, which is responsible for the printing of passport forms, was yet to make a decision on which banks would be selected for the implementation of the online application system.
Mr Ntrakwa said the National Information Technology Agency (NITA), as part of the trial process, ran a pilot project on the online system where six people used the process to apply for passports without any difficulty.
He explained that the online system would come with additional services such as text messages which would be sent to applicants to update them on the status of their applications.
Mr Ntrakwa added that the Passport Office was in talks with the National Identification Authority (NIA), on how the two institutions could collaborate to build a reliable database for the country.
He further said with the introduction of the new online platform for passport applicants, the phenomenon of middlemen playing a role in the acquisition of passports for unsuspecting applicants would be a thing of the past.
Source: Graphiconline
