The Minister for communications, Mrs. Ursula Owusu-Ekuful has inaugurated biometric e-Gates at the Kotoka International Airport which is part of government’s digitization agenda.According to the Minister these biometric e-Gates will also help the Ghana Immigration Service (GIS) to enhance service delivery by facilitating exchange of information.
This application according to the Minister is a total integrated e-Immigration system that is capable of regulating entry into and exit from Ghana and provides a case management system to process permits and also meet the current and future needs of the Ghana Immigration Service.
“The focus of the e-Immigration system was the provision of an end- to-end integration of: border control operations, permit and Visa Management System, business processes including document and record management, web-enabled system”, she explained.
She disclosed that the entire project covers the Headquarters of GIS and subsidiary offices, Kotoka International Airport, Tema and Takoradi Ports, Disaster recovery, and Paga, Aflao, Elubo borders.
The Minister of Communications emphasized that the key activities involve the implementation of Visa-On-Arrival Service Portal, installation of state of the Art Datacentre at GIS Headquarters, implementation of disaster recovery system at National Information Technology Agency (NITA) facilities, implementation of secure and regular power distribution using appropriate infrastructure and diesel generator, deployment of secure border management system in six ports of entry and deployment of centralized Automated Fingerprint Identification System.
She stated that the e-Gates provides automatic border control solution and ease peak traffic workload for Immigration by registered travelers, adding the e-Gates allow travelers to use their passports to automatically enter and exit the country.
“The e-Gates solution will cater for Registered Traveler Program and for regular passenger processing. This new system will be replacing PISCES system which only does identification”, she hinted.
She said it is the expectation of the government that the GIS will make optimum use of the facility and completely migrate from the present PISCES system to use the new improved Secure Border Management System(SBMS) specifically developed for Ghana that conforms to all global standards.
She however entreated all the stakeholders to engage extensive public education to enable the public open up for this innovation.
Source: moc.gov.gh