Over 60,000 passport without owners – Minister

The deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs and Regional Integration Mohammed Tijani has disclosed that there are over 60,000 unclaimed passports at the Passport Office because their owners are nowhere to be found.
Mr. Tijani who made the disclosure Friday in an interview with Accra FM blamed the development on the activities of ‘Goro Boys.’

“You will be given a date to come for your passport and within 21 days you must go and find whether your passport is ready or not. A lot of people have gone through the system and haven’t gone back for their passports. People are not able to claim their passports, we have over 60,000 that have not been claimed; they are there,” he said.

He added: “When I visited the Passport Office, we did random sampling, picked passports, called the numbers and the people we called were not there, some of them said that they hadn’t filled for any passport form.

“This happens because somebody looks big and called somebody to fill a passport form for him or probably the applicants just gave the information to another person to fill and get a passport for them. They may have given a number that may belong to a ‘Goro Boy’ or probably they gave wrong numbers. These are some of the reasons these passports have not been claimed. Or somebody filled it properly though but abandoned it.”