Apply for your UK visas; nothing has changed – UK High C’ssioner refutes rumour
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The United Kingdom High Commissioner to Ghana has doused the flames ignited by a proposed policy to demand £3,000 bond from high-risk visitors to that country.
Mr. Peter Jones told Joy FM’s Super Morning Show Wednesday that the policy remained a proposal.
He said it had not been implemented yet. The status quo, he insisted, therefore, remains.
Even if the policy was implemented on a pilot basis as was being contemplated, Mr. Jones said, it would affect only a small number of visitors to the UK.
The UK Home Secretary Theresa May announced Monday, the policy was intended to make the immigration system more ‘selective’ and deter people from ‘overstaying’ once their visitor visa has expired.
The scheme will be piloted from November, and will cover travellers from India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, Nigeria and Ghana.
The proposal has met with stiff opposition, even condemnation, from politicians, business associations and individuals of the affected countries.
Some Ghanaian Members of Parliament Tuesday demanded a strong statement from the government but Deputy Information Minister Murtala Mohammed said the government treats Theresa May’s announcement as a rumour.
He surmised that to the extent that the government had not been communicated to on the policy, “We might as well treat it as a rumour.”
Nonetheless, Mr. Peter Jones said a “certain amount of misunderstanding is out there, I think, about this possible visa bond issue and the most important thing to say about that is that nothing has been decided.”
He explained that the idea under consideration is “that for a limited number of high-risk [visa] applicants, possibly a bond would be required where they pay a certain amount of money in advance, they go to the UK if they come back they get the money back.”
He did not explain what makes an applicant a high-risk visitor except to say that “that will depend on people’s applications.”
| joyonline |
ABOUT: Nana Kwesi Coomson
[email protected] An Entrepreneur, Corporate Social Responsibility, Corporate Communications Executive and Philanthropist. Editor-in-Chief of www.233times.com. A Senior Journalist with Ghanaian Chronicle Newspaper. An alumnus of Adisadel College where he read General Arts. His first degree is in Bachelor of Arts - Political Science (major) and History (minor) from the University of Ghana. He holds MSc in Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) and Energy with Public Relations (PR) from the Robert Gordon University in the United Kingdom. He is a 2018 Mandela Washington Fellow who studied at Clark Atlanta University in USA on the Business and Entrepreneurship track.
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