A recent requirement by the Ghana Immigration Service to passengers in public transportation going to other parts of the country to show proof if identity and nationality is causing consternation. At around 4.00 pm yesterday, 44 passengers travelling a bus to Accra with were forced to go through the Immigration Check-point at Zebilla and present their identification cards for inspection, a development that caused great consternation among the passengers, all of them Ghanaians but many from the North.
Normally, people moving within the borders of Ghana are not required to demonstrate proof of identity and nationality on the streets.
Recently the Ghana Immigration Service has justified the practice. The service recently turned back 16 nationals of other nations at the checkpoint for entering the nation illegally.
Speaking to the Daily Searchlight, one of the passengers, a lawyer who was on his way back to Accra, stated that he found the procedure demeaning, particularly due to where the checkpoint was placed.
He questioned why the checks could not be conducted at the border points of Ghana, instead of at a barrier several kilometers into the interior of the country.
Zebilla is the capital of Bawku West district, a district in the Upper East Region of northern Ghana.
Recently the immigration officers in the Bawku West District of the Upper East Region arrested a total of 16 foreign nationals who allegedly entered Ghana illegally through an unapproved route at Widana in the Pusiga District.
The sixteen joined a public transport at dawn at about 3:00 am.
According to the immigration officers, their thorough search and surveillance in line with the president’s closure of the country’s borders led to the arrest of the illegal immigrants.
The immigration officers at the time escorted the vehicle and its occupants to Pulmakom border for them to be sent back to wherever they came from.
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