Vice President, Dr. Mahamudu Bawumia has said the Government’s approach to improving the delivery of public services is to minimize human contact as much as possible so they embarked on aggressive digitization of the processes of service delivery across many public institutions and minimize corruption.
Delivering a public lecture on how Ghana’s economy was being digitalized at the Ashesi University, Dr. Bawumia said “Before 2017, applications for passports required the applicant to complete a paper form in pen and submit it to the passport office either personally or upload it online in PDF format to begin the process. It was therefore still a manual process. Following digitization, passport applications are now online and there is no need for middlemen or for the payment of bribes to obtain a passport. The average turnaround time for the acquisition of passports has been significantly reduced”.
He said previously, “The bureaucracy in the clearing of goods at Ghana’s ports involved a lot of paperwork and used to be largely manual. This caused delays, corruption, inefficiencies, frustration, and loss of revenue to the government. Many citizens who had cleared goods at the country’s ports had horror stories about their experiences with the processes of Ghana Ports and Harbours Authority (GPHA). The introduction of a paperless port system has reduced the layers and simplified the process, reduced the time needed to clear goods and the avenues for corruption, and increased efficiencies and revenue mobilization at the ports. There is now no room for negotiation of import duty as it is automatically calculated by the system. This is saving the government a lot of money and citizens a lot of frustration”.
“Driver licensing and Vehicle Registration related services. All these services of the Authority have been fully digitized. With the digitization of the drivers’ licenses in 2019, the Authority experienced an increase in service by 109% in 2020. As of August 2021, service performance has exceeded the peak performance of 2020 by about 16%. No middlemen (Goro boys) and bribes are needed to obtain these services”.
Source: Mybrytfmonline.com/Kofi Atakora
