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Message: [QUOTE="Munyaradzi Mafaro, post: 50322, member: 636"] Parliament's Minority caucus has blasted the government over a recent chip-embedded passport relaunch. They call the move wasteful and say it does nothing to help people. The critics argue the exercise failed to clear the backlog of passport applications. Instead, they claim it just drained public money. Opposition leaders want answers about this spending. Deputy Ranking Member Nana Asafo Adjei Ayeh says the previous NPP administration created the whole project. The former government contracted and paid for everything before leaving office. All testing was finished and the project launched in December 2024. Officials had already bought 50,000 booklets and ordered 200,000 more. The groundwork was completely done. Foreign Affairs Minister Samuel Okudzeto Ablakwa staged what critics call a costly relaunch on April 28, 2025. Taxpayers paid $1.2 million for this event. Ayeh says the relaunch failed to expand printing capacity or fix paper shortages. The expensive ceremony solved no real problems. He claims it just rebranded work that was already finished. The Bosome Freho MP shared troubling numbers from June 2025. The Passport Office had 232,467 unprinted applications sitting around. About 68% of people who applied had waited more than eight weeks for their documents. These applicants had paid extra for express services that should take just 15 days. The delays are causing real hardships. Mothers are missing scholarship deadlines because they cannot travel. Traders are stuck without the documents they need for business trips. A video showing this crisis has been watched over 1.4 million times. The opposition says this proves the government has failed to deliver basic services. People are frustrated with the poor service. [/QUOTE]

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