Immigration officers banned from passport office

Reports reaching Today Newspaper indicate Immigration Officers have been banned from going to the Passport Office in Accra.
The directive, according to a source close to the Passport Office, was issued by the Minister for Foreign Affairs, Alhaji Mohammed Mumuni, when he visited the state agency last Friday.
According to the source, the minister gave the directive in the wake of many reports he received to the effect that immigration officers have been thronging the Passport Office each passing day with some engaging in all manner of fictitious deals for their “clients.”
The source indicated that the minister had also taken note of the congestion at the Passport Office and thereby adopted this measure to curb the problem.
But when Today reached him on telephone, Alhaji Mohammed Mumuni described our questions on the ban as comical.
“This information sounds comical and I believe it is an illiterate Dagomba farmer who has lost his way in the forest that brought this information out.”
He intimated that “First and foremost it is not true and I do not even remember the last time I visited the Passport Office,” and stressed, “For over two months now I have never been there.”
The minister told Today that his ministry works with immigration officers, and added that, there was no way his ministry would ban immigration officers from going to the Passport Office.
According to Hon. Mumuni, passport acquisition is a process that requires collaboration between a number of stakeholders which include: “the Ghana Immigration Service, Ministry of Defence Intelligence Unit and National Security.”
“Passports are security documents and these institutions have to play crucial roles to ensure genuineness and originality,” Hon. Mumuni emphasised.
Meanwhile, the minister’s directive, the paper found out, has already created some nasty tensions between immigration officers and security personnel at the Passport Office.
The immigration officers cannot fathom why a directive will be issued to that effect since the Immigration Service work closely with the Passport Office.
This paper gathered that many of the immigration officers are indeed miffed at Alhaji Mumuni’s directive. They are at a loss as to why personnel of other security agencies, such as the police and the military, “have not been banned” from the Passport Office, when, according to the immigration officers who spoke to this paper, have turned the Passport Office into their “individual private homes [where they transact] all manner of deals.”
According to some of the immigration officers, the minister’s directive will create a situation where regional Liaison Immigration Officers cannot also have access to the Passport Office. This, they contended, would affect especially the regional operations of the Immigration Service as long as passport issues go.
Against this background, the officers appealed to the minister to rescind his decision to ensure the smooth running of the day-to-day operations of the Immigration Service on the matter of passports.