According to him, this move places Ghana at a vantage point in ongoing plans towards the worldwide implementation of E-visas.
This means the Ghana Card, which is a unique biometric identification card, will be accepted as an e-passport in 197 borders globally and 44,000 airports in the world.
“Any decision to accept such alternative travel identity document is made by the receiving state itself,” ICAO tweeted.
But speaking on The Probe on Sunday, Mr Blay explained that the February 9 launch was not to digitalise visas but to rather trigger the needed infrastructure to easily transition into the E-Visa plans once it is launched by ICAO in the near future.
“The GhanaCard has a chip, our passport today doesn’t have the chip so it doesn’t qualify as an e-passport. So GhanaCard as it stands has the E-passport embedded in it.
For now, the card will allow card-bearing Ghanaians to enter the country from across the world without necessarily showing the booklet version of the passport.
“The Ghana Airports Company Limited, as a result of ICAO now agreeing and approving our card as an e-passport complaint, now they have [GACL] issued out statements to all these airline companies and airport saying that people can now come to Ghana with the GhanaCard.”
