E-Passport: What Vice President Bawumia actually said

Below is what the Vice President actually said on Tuesday, November 2 when he explained all about the e-passport to a student of Ashesi University.

STUDENT: In your speech, you were talking of the Ghanacard that is going to serve as an e-passport. Does that mean that the passport will be completely scrapped off? And for like visas, how is that going to synchronize with the card? Is it going to be on the passport or a digital form on the Ghanacard? Thank you.

DR. BAWUMIA: As I said before, we have become the 79th member of the ICAO (International Civil Aviation Organization) PKD Community, and this will allow, by the end of the first quarter next year, airport to read the card and information on the card, all airports, pretty much anywhere in the world. It doesn’t mean that you don’t need your physical passport to travel. We will get to the stage where we can have agreements.

Right now what is happening is that, we are linking every passport with the national ID number. The Ghanacard number and the passport number will be linked so that your travel history is preserved . We have not yet reached there; currently in terms of visas, you have ICAO 1.0 in operation. When it comes to 2.0, you will get electronic visas and we are not there yet.

Since we are not there yet, you are going to travel on your normal passports, but you can always present your e-passport for verification. And if you are stucked anywhere in the world and you need to come to Ghana and you don’t have your manual passport and you have your e-passport, you will be allowed to board the flight as long as it is coming to Ghana.

So when ICAO 2.O comes into operation, the visas can actually be issued electronically the Ghanacard, when it comes into operation. But we are not there yet, and we are making that progress one step at a time.