The Foreign Affairs Minister, Shirley Ayorkor Botchway has stated that the Electronic Visa system will help prevent people from faking visas in the country.
She revealed this during the launch of the e-visa’s Site Acceptance Test (SAT).
It would be recalled that the e-visa project started in the year 2020. The project has reached its final stage which includes the installation of equipment that can read the applicants’ data from the world to help the Immigration Service in Ghana either admit or deny the source visas.
In an interview at the launch of the SAT, Madam Shirley Ayorkor Botchway revealed that the new system will help improve the quality of the security features of Ghana’s visa regime.
“The new system will have all your relevant data just like the visas you get when you apply to the UK or the US. That’s what we’re starting with. We need to be able to get a good database of the people who come here. Our systems in our missions abroad and immigration in Ghana need to be synchronized to prevent people from faking our visas.
“The current visa stickers we use are handwritten and it’s a major problem for us where some people are even able to fake our visas and it’s difficult for us to detect. This will be a thing of the past,” she noted.
Meanwhile, after the technology is installed and tested successfully in Ghana, the mission in London, England, and Berlin, Germany will be the first to begin granting e-visas to applicants travelling to Ghana.
Therefore, the Foreign Minister said, “when we have a good database of people who are frequent visitors the decision will be made on when to start issuing electronic visas.”
