Passport Division Back in ‘Mess’; Extortion of Money from Applicants Angers President Sirleaf

The President has ordered a probe into the matter

Upon hearing of a breakdown in the system of issuing passports, with long lines and huge money being extorted from people for processing their passports, an angry President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf on Monday paid a surprise visit to the Passport Division of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. The President’s mission there was to see the situation first-hand.

President Sirleaf cautioned the Director of the Passport Division, Mrs. Tennema Deline, about the inefficiencies and of going back to the old habits. She recalled that, under former Passport Director Mary Broh, it used to take only 48 hours to issue passports, now it was now taking weeks.

At the time she took over, the Division was “in a mess.” And so, during her tenure at the Passport Division of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Broh restructured that Division, ensuring a more effective service.

Broh recalled in an interview with the Daily Observer newspaper in Monrovia that “There was a room filled with application forms with rats in there. A thousand people had applied for passports for over five to six months without receiving them. And some of these people had paid up to US$500 for passports that only cost US$20. I jailed all those responsible for such acts. In less than a month they all received their passports. I issued passports as fast as within 20 minutes in cases of emergences. To curb the selling of forms, I created unique passports per applicant. I used to be at work up to 11 p.m. and would give out 1500 passports per month, including the various diplomatic missions abroad.”

But after observing that things were now back to the status quo (extortion of huge sums of money from applicants, etc.), the President, during her surprise Monday visit, demanded immediate corrective actions to address the long lines of people waiting for passports, as well as the practice of applicants once again paying staff for service.

Foreign Ministry’s Cookshop Ordered Shut

Continuing her surprise tour, the President stopped on the first floor of the Foreign Ministry, having been informed that some staff were operating a cookshop on the premises, right down the hall from the cafeteria.

Accusing the staff of turning a government office into a restaurant, and of selling food when they were supposed to be working, the President summoned the new named Deputy Minister for Administration (DMA), Mrs. Una Thompson, and ordered her to shut down the operation.

She also instructed Mrs. Thompson to clean up the bottlenecks in the Passport Division, which appeared to be reverting to its old ways, and to identify a particular official who had accepted money for passports.

Reacting, Mrs. Thompson apologized and assured the President that it would not happen again.

When told by the President that she had visited the Passport Division and that it had reverted to the old system of doing things, Mrs. Thompson said she would be assembling the legal team to address the concerns and clean up the problem.