Mobile Consular Services for Ghana immigrants in Finland
Ghanaian immigrants in Finland recently benefited once again from a mobile consular service conducted in Helsinki by the Ghana Embassy in Oslo.
The mobile consular services was organised from January 21to 24, 2023 by the staff of the Ghana Embassy in Oslo.
The team, made up of the Head of the Consular Section of the Embassy, Nana Antwi Baffour and Mr. Arthur Mills, Counsellor/ Political & Economic Desk, worked tirelessly to serve the over 200 applications presented to them during the exercise.
A similar service was first conducted in Helsinki in September 2021 by the Embassy where they served over 300 applications for the biometric passports.
At that time, the huge number of appli cations could largely be attributed to the COVID-19 situation with its attendant prob lems such as the lockdowns which prevented people whose passports had expired as well as babies who had been born around that pe riod from travelling or initiating the process to secure new passports.
The recent exercise still saw a huge number of applicants and the team was under im mense pressure to serve them all.
The first-ever mobile services took place in October 2018 when staff from the Ghana Embassy in Denmark, which at that time had concurrent accreditation to Sweden, Norway, Finland, and Iceland, organised the exercise in Helsinki.
The Ghana Embassy in Oslo has continued with the consular services ever since it took over from the Ghana Embassy in Denmark and the accreditation to Finland and Iceland.
The mobile consular exercise is organised periodically to bring consular services to the door-step of immigrants Ghanaians in Finland and help them with services such as securing biometric passports which would eventual ly replace the machine-readable ones. The exercise is hailed as a huge benefit to many people.
Generally, the mobile consular service in volves immigration issues such as the issuing of passports, visas, authentication, renunci ation and dual citizenship, travelling certifi cates, among others.
The recent exercise, however, mainly concentrated on applications for biometric pass ports, which seemed to dominate applicants’ concerns.
Many people later gave very positive and highly appreciative feedback about the exercise, es pecially because of the time and money saved.
To them, it could have been very costly, inconvenient and difficult if they had had to travel or post their documents to the Ghana Embassy in Oslo, the capital of Norway.
Many of them admired the professional, excellent and very helpful service rendered by the efficient staff in such a commendable way.
They wished that the mobile consular services would be arranged regularly t o make things easy for those who want to access the consular services. Thank you.
Email: perpetualcrentsil@gmail.com
By Perpetual Crentsil
