Passport Office brings changes to meet modern trends - Director

The Director of Passports, Alexander Grant Ntrakwa, remembers his first day at work.

It was August 25, 2014. He had been assigned from the head office of the Foreign Affairs Ministry in Accra.

"The way I saw the passport office, I said, there was no way I was going to work in that environment," he quickly processed his shock.

Zoo-like at its busiest, refugee camp at its slowest. Angry queues, insulted staff and screaming security officers.

Moving in and out of the building, trying to unofficially bridge the gap of frustration were middle-men who could get you a passport in exchange for an arm and a leg.

Nothing kills the patriotism of a travelling Ghanaian than an application for a passport - arguably. The internet remains a reliable witness documenting in articles, the frustrations, the red-hot anger.

All because of a simple booklet to record dates and destinations.

Ghana has broken down, an angry opinion read. And if you listen to the reason for the frustrations as explained by the Director of Passport, this angry man would feel vindicated.

The two old, tired printers had broken down, he said.

"The printers were some desktop printers that were breaking down every now and then," he said.

"The two printers were not the type that you could load and sit back and get it printed. They were the ones that you have to slot a paper in one after the other

So  26,000 ready-to-print passports sat on laptops as their owners sat on tenterhooks.

Mr Ntrakwa explained on the Super Morning Show Wednesday how he got to work at a national pain in the neck - the passport office.

He said the first target was to clear off the backlog and the front log of huge human presence at the office.

He said he got two industrial printers from Germany to clear more than 26,000 backlog and after relentless work the office had cleared this by December.

The German machines perhaps shocked at the Ghanaian pressure, broke down after crossing the finishing line.

The backlog returned with a vengeance exceeding 26,000 after about four weeks. It took four months to install a fitter, pressure-tested system of printing passports.

"It has the capacity of printing about 1000 or more passports a day. Within 15 minutes it prints 30 books, he explained.

With a new printing technology in place, a relieved Director turned his attention to the human presence at the Passport Office in Accra.

"We realised that the situation could be improved if we prevented everybody from coming to the passport office because...in other advanced countries, you don't see people at the passport office. It is a security zone".

Replacing a machine is easy if you have the money. Sacking a crowd is reserved for those who have guts. The Director of Passports explained why this step was necessary.

"...the reason was that on a daily basis with the sort of pressure that they put on officers, we end up attending to them and in the process leave all the applications that had come to the office.

"... and so from morning to evening you are attending to people. By the close of work they are gone and then the others who couldn't come to the office have their cases sitting in the system with nobody to work on them"

He sacked everybody including an industry of middle-men who had made a healthy profit on an unhealthy public service.

"We had to clear all of them from the passport office. Everybody who was not on our list as a staff was banned from the passport office" he said.

Mr. Alexander Ntrakwa who had by now demonstrated a stiff spine for discipline suggested even more radical changes were in store, had he not been prevailed upon.

"If I had been given the opportunity to do certain things, it would have been more drastic than we did".

He said he had wanted to prohibit staff who work in certain offices from entering the office with their mobile phones through which they could receive information from some middle-men who wanted a quick job for some quick cash.

The Director in his baritone voice said the office instituted a customer service center to close the communication gap between the office and clients.

"We gave out the numbers and we said that if you had any challenge call those numbers...even if your passport is ready the person will be able to tell you and direct you..so don't come there at all"

"That has helped a lot", he breathed a sigh of relief as his professional allergy to human crowds continued. The Passport Office now has an online service, so effectively the queues are now in the internet cables.

An express request for passport is now down to nine days - nine Ghanaian days, like nine European days. A regular request is 21 days, he explained.

"As we speak we don't even have 4,000 passports to print" he reported much-needed success. With two printers churning 2,000 passports a day and a third back-up printer ready to play super-sub in case of an emergency.

"These days, nobody even hears of break down at the passport office", his uncommon public sector triumph continued.

Ntrakwa is a satisfied man. But he says he is not done yet. He  wants the Passport Office to look like any of the top banks in Ghana.

Before he left the studio, he begged passionately, "the passport office still needs infrastructure required to work. If we get something like an auditorium where applicants go and they can see not less than 20 booths...I think it will ease the pressure on everybody.

Glossy furniture. nice glass windows, cosy air-conditions, spacious, perfumed offices and creative architecture that comes so easily to private banks.

"Kojo, this is unbelievable. it is just unbelievable", Francis, a caller from Achimota gushed.

A passport online and on time may not a big deal. But in Ghana, we thank God for small miracles.