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Ghana Embassy In Toronto (Canada) Makes A “Stupid” Requirement For Visa Acquisition

Feature Article Shirley Ayorkor Botchway, Foreign Affairs Minister
MAY 26, 2017 LISTEN
Shirley Ayorkor Botchway, Foreign Affairs Minister

I may be sorry for the heading of this publication but I cannot think of any better heading befitting the occasion than the one just chosen, thus, Ghana Embassy in Toronto (Canada) Makes a Stupid Requirement for Visa Acquisition.

The stringent requirements for visa acquisition or application have the following among them of which I find the enforcement of a particular one absolutely insane on the part of the policy formulators.

To acquire Ghana visa in Toronto by anyone intending to visit Ghana of whom although most of them, were originally Ghanaians before naturalising as Canadian citizens, one has to obligatorily provide on their visa application form two contacts (hosts) in Ghana with their houses addresses, telephone numbers and email addresses. These are among the other requirements.

However, I find making an email address an obligation but not optional, very worrying if not completely nonsensical. How many people in Ghana have access to computers or possess smart phones with internet access? How many people are able to purchase unlimited Wi-Fi data for their computers or smart phones if at all they have such gadgets?

In case one of your contacts or both are in a village without access to electricity, how could they have access to internet? Even in the cities and with our intermittent power outages popularly called dumsor, should email address be an obligation knowing very well the problem of limited access to computers and the cost of purchasing Wi-Fi data to enable one avail themselves of the internet either via their phones or computers?

What could be the rational behind the demand for the email address of not the applicant him or herself but their hosts in Ghana? Are the home addresses and phone numbers not enough to assist or trace the applicant in an event of accident?

Yes, it is not difficult to create an email address but what is the essence of it if the person may end up not having the means to access the information to be sent to them through the internet? Again, if one’s illiterate parents are their contacts in Ghana, how can they access the internet and what will be the use of an email address to them?

I do not have to dwell on discussing this email address issue because I find it as not a thought-through but an ill-thought requirement by the policymakers or whoever designed the visa application form.

I have been informed that without the email addresses of the hosts in Ghana, one will be refused a visa for non satisfaction of the obligatory requirements. It is not everybody who has got a contact person in the cities and big towns in Ghana. Some people come from villages where houses may not even have addresses (house numbers). I stand to be corrected on some houses in the remote areas of Ghana having no addresses.

I hope after this publication, the Ghana Embassy in Canada or the Consulate in Toronto will drop that absurd obligatory request for email addresses without which one will be refused a Ghana visa even though the applicant is visiting his/her home country to see parents, siblings, relatives or to attend the funeral of a loved one.

I leave it to my younger brother DJ Sarkodie of Sources radio UK online to expatiate on this Toronto visa issue during his radio programmes.

Rockson Adofo

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