Former Member of Parliament for Kumbungu, Ras Mubarak is against any move to increase the application fees for passports.
He said that this is not the right time for the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Regional Integration to increase the fees given the rising cost of other products such as internet data.
“It is not a good time to increase the prices of anything, data is becoming more expensive, and to apply for a passport you have to initiate it online. It will be a bit insensitive to increase the fees of acquiring passports at this moment,” he told journalists on Tuesday, November 28 in reaction to an announcement by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Regional Integration about a possible rise in passport application fees.
Production costs and higher charges by other countries in the sub-region are the reasons for the imminent increment. This was disclosed by the Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs and Regional Integration, Kwaku Ampratwum-Sarpong.
Addressing a press conference in Accra on Tuesday, November 28, he said “Liberia charges $50, we charge $8, meaning we have to subsidize every passport. So the money to buy the printers is used to subsidize the passports… And also, we are thinking of upgrading our passport from biometric to chip-embedded.
“So the chip-embedded version is going to cost more. If we continue charging at $8, we will continue to face the problems that we are having at the passport office… So we have to raise the fees,” he said.