Mr Kwasi Amankwaah, Eastern Regional Information Services Department official, has urge Ghanaians to acquire the new Biometric Passport when it takes off in April this year.
He said the current passport would remain valid until January 2015, after which all Ghanaians would be required to have a biometric passport.
Mr Amankwaah said this when he addressed various heads of public departments and agencies at Nsawam at a meeting. It was organized in collaboration with the Ghana Immigration Service (GIS) to educate people on the introduction of the new passport.
He said the biometric passport would have similar features as the current one, except the addition of few things such as biometric fingerprints and digital photographs on it.
Mr Divine Narlobie, Eastern Regional Commander of GIS said the biometric passport has been specially designed with special security features to check activities of illegal passport contractors.
He said the passport office has put in place strict measures to protect the privacy of the applicant from the passport contractors.
Commander Narlobie said a maximum of 15 working days has been fixed for normal procession and a maximum of three days for expedited processing from the date of submission.
He said it would be the duty of immigration authorities to use appropriate equipment with additional security measures to check fraud.
Dr Godfried Osei Bonsu Twum, Akwapem South Municipal Chief Executive, who chaired the function, advised the immigration personnel and other enforcement agencies to learn more about the features in order to check unscrupulous persons from sabotaging the system.