How visa appointments are manipulated – Former French Ambassador to Ghana

Explaining why visa slots are not readily available and easy to come by in the embassies, she said many people had applied with different details and when they succeeded, they ended up selling the slots to others.

“The other thing is scammers. Some people are buying the slots to sell them back,” she said.

“Actually, they were using some insiders who were on their mobile phones and refreshing the VFS (Visa Facilitation Services) website until there was a slot available and then they’ll buy it with a fake passport number name; pay GH¢70 to book that slot and sell it back for GH¢800 and all they had to do is to refresh and refresh and buy the slot and sell them back,” she said.

To buttress her point, the former French Ambassador cited her last day in her office with a list of names of people with the same telephone numbers who had got slots from the embassy.

“In my last month in office, what I was going through every Friday was asking the VFS for the list of appointments for the next three months and then I will I’ll sort them by phone number, by email, and by motive of travel and when I did that, I saw that 60 application had the same phone number. I was just cancelling immediately. So, 60,” she narrated to Andy Dosty.

She further explained that there were instances where, after cancelling the applications, calls were coming through asking why their applications were cancelled. This created issues and problems with the agents and applicants.

“So the people will turn up and say but I had an appointment and I’ll tell them sorry it’s been cancelled then they’ll go to their agent or middlemen who had illegally sold them GH¢800 instead of GH¢70 and they’ll do their business together.”