Foreign Affairs Minister, Shirley Ayorkor Botchwey, has expressed anger at officers at passport offices across the country, for allegedly crippling the system for their personal gains.
According to the minister, some officers through “goro boys” have been engaging in corrupt practices to extort money from applicants.
In her engagement with the media at the passport office in Accra, she bemoaned that Ghanaians constantly blame politicians for corruption while ignoring the fact that civil servants are the most corrupt.
“There is too much happening that really shouldn’t be happening within the passport acquisition system.
If we talk about “goro” people, these “goro” people are outsiders.
They do not work on their own because if the “goro” person collects somebody’s money, they need to work with somebody from inside to change the date.
I am not saying it is all of you but there are some of you, who are engaged in it and this should stop.
The blame is always on the Ministry of Foreign Affairs meanwhile it is the agencies, and I am sure even some of our staff are even involved. Public servants who are supposed to be giving public service to Ghanaians.
The Vice President has led the digitization effort with my support and all of my officers to put in place and online system.
Now, the online system is being manipulated so that people can make money off it. There is an investigations going on and some names have been mentioned. Anybody who has been working here for more than a year, from Monday , please do not come back because you’ve been changed.
We want to bring some sanity. Every time, we say, politicians are corrupt, meanwhile, it’s some public and civil servants who will do things that shouldn’t be done, and then they will be put it on politicians.
We are trying to bring sanity into the system but no”.
This comes after media reports claimed that some officials working with the passport office were engaged in illegality.
She said her visit was necessary because people had raised concerns of how they have been extorted by some officials and condemned their actions.