The Minister for Foreign Affairs and Regional In-tegration, Shirley Ayorkor Botchwey, last Tuesday, officially inaugurated the Premium Appli-cation Centre (PAC) in London.
The PAC in London is the first of its kind in the diaspora and is the culmination of efforts by Ghana to deliver premium passport and visa application services to citizens following a successful four years pilot in Ghana.
PAC is a premium service to complement the existing consular services provided by the Ghana Mission in London.
A statement issued by PAC in Accra yesterday and copied to the Ghanaian Times, said the Minister for Foreign Affairs and Regional Integration, Ms Botchwey, who opened the Centre, acknowledged the importance of the centre and reiterated the resolve of the min-istry to further improve its service delivery.
Ms Botchwey said, "... This milestone event marks another achievement in the determina-tion of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Regional Integration to provide quality service delivery at home and its missions abroad. The opening of this PAC, the first to have been established, is a testimony to the progress we have made in recent years. Every applicant can expect expedited frontline consular services for passport, visa, and travel certifi-cate applications."
The minister emphasised that the final determination of applications would be done by the consular section of the Ghana High Commission - so this is for frontline services only.
"I, therefore, call on Gha-naians and the public to take advantage of this PAC. As the Ministry opens such facilities in several Ghanaian missions in the coming years, we will draw lessons from the successes and shortcom-ings of the London PAC - I hope more successes than shortcom-ings," she said.
The minister said the centre formed part of the long-term ob-jectives of the Ghanaian govern-ment to improve consular services both at home and abroad.
"The opening of this brand-new PAC is to give citizens of Ghana and visitors to Ghana, in the United Kingdom, conve-nient access to an efficient and comprehensive process for faster passport and visa application and acquisition all in one place," Ms Botchwey, said.
The Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of Access Group, Nidal Kamouni, said "We are a Gha-naian company with interna-tional reach serving reputable governments and are delighted to be working with the govern-ment of Ghana to handle and manage what we call the front-end element of service delivery, which is basically ensuring that all citizens and visitors to Ghana have the best experience when it comes to applying for their passports and visas, offload-ing some of the volumes and load off the High Commission. This collaboration will enable us to help all applicants in a timely manner, providing faster processing service which allows the diplomatic missions to focus on the decision-making part of issuance."
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Ghana's High Commissioner to UK and Ireland, Papa Ow-usu-Ankomah, in his remarks called on all Ghanaians in the UK to use the services of PAC.
He said the establishment of PAC came as a relief to the mis-sion as it provided an alternative for anyone wanting to apply for visas and passports.
"I hope that we'll cooperate so that this becomes a success and demonstrates the way Ghana is improving its consular services globally," Mr Owu-su-Ankomah, said.
