Shirley Ayorkor Botchwey, the Minister of Foreign Affairs and Regional Integration, has stated that the Ghana Card is not a replacement for the country’s biometric passport.
The card, she claimed, could not be used to travel to other ECOWAS countries or outside of them.
“It must be emphasized that the passport, along with the travel certificate, is the sole internationally recognized approved travel document for Ghanaians,” the minister stated.
Ms Botchwey stated this on the floor of Parliament yesterday in response to questions from Zuwera Mohammed Ibrahimah, the Member of Parliament (MP) for Salaga South of the National Democratic Congress (NDC), on whether Ghanaians no longer required a passport to travel and whether the Ghana Card now served as the Ghanaian passport.
Ms Botchwey went on to say that her organization was in talks with ECOWAS member states and the country’s bilateral partners about using the Ghana Card as a travel document.
“Mr Speaker, at this time, the Ghana Card cannot be used for travel to other countries, either within or outside ECOWAS, because that would necessitate bilateral agreements with the countries’ authorities for the card to be accepted as a travel document,” she informed the House.
Although the card had the technical features of an e-passport, the minister acknowledged it still had a long way to go before it was recognized as such.
On the distinctions between the card and the e-passport, Ms Botchwey explained that an e-passport is an international travel document that contains the bio-data of its holder on a microchip and has robust security features, whereas the Ghana Card, according to Section 19 of the National Identification Authority Act, 2006 (Act 707), is “an identity card with a personal identification number issued by the authority for purposes of identification of a person to whom the card is issued.”
As a result, she explained, while the card served primarily as an identifying document, an e-passport served primarily as a travel document.
Ms Botchwey recalled that Ghana was welcomed into the ICAO Public Key Directory (PKD), a single repository for international travel documents, at a recent event held at the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO) Headquarters in Montreal, Canada.
“The ICAO’s congratulations comments conveyed to Ghana following the latter’s decision to join the PKD were not intended to imply that the Ghana Card had become an e-passport,” she added.
