{"id":314860,"date":"2017-04-29T06:00:29","date_gmt":"2017-04-29T06:00:29","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/citifmonline.com\/?p=314860"},"modified":"2017-04-29T06:00:29","modified_gmt":"2017-04-29T06:00:29","slug":"parliaments-image-smeared-again-by-visa-fraud-allegations-acepa","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/?p=314860","title":{"rendered":"Parliament&#8217;s image smeared again by &#8216;Visa fraud&#8217; allegations \u2013 ACEPA"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Africa Centre for Parliamentary Affairs (ACEPA), has described as unfortunate the recent allegation of immigration-related offences by some current and former Members of Parliament.<\/p>\n<p>According to the civil society organization, the allegation dents the legislative body\u2019s integrity.<\/p>\n<p>[contextly_sidebar id=&#8221;gUaTauxgKJknFjzGvLIDhEUVh2kRVokB&#8221;]The British High Commissioner to Ghana, Jon Benjamin, in a letter leaked to the media earlier this week, announced that four legislators including a former MP, have been banned for ten years from entering the UK for various illegal immigration practice facilitated by their diplomatic passports.<\/p>\n<p>Their offenses include helping supposed relatives overstay their <span style=\"color: #666699;\"><a style=\"color: #666699;\" href=\"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/2017\/04\/26\/4-visa-fraud-mps-to-lose-diplomatic-passports-if-guilty-minister\/\"><strong>visas<\/strong><\/a><\/span> in the UK.<\/p>\n<p>The Executive Director of ACEPA, Dr. Rasheed Dramani, said, \u201cI think it is yet another heavy blow to the integrity of our Parliament and that is how I will describe it. It is quite unfortunate, and what makes it more unfortunate is the timing of it; at a time when we are healing from another scandal.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>On calls for the diplomatic passports of Members of Parliament to be withdrawn following the allegations, Dr. Rasheed Dramani said withdrawing the diplomatic passports will amount to nothing.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI think it is not a question of diplomatic passports. It is more about anybody who carries the Ghanaian identity to show that they are a worthy ambassador\u2026 The issue is more about all Members of Parliament being guided by the fact that they have a heavy responsibility that they carry in the way they do everything and carry themselves at all times.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>All the MPs implicated in the alleged incident have been slapped with a 10-year <span style=\"color: #666699;\"><a style=\"color: #666699;\" href=\"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/2017\/04\/26\/four-mps-barred-from-the-uk-for-visa-fraud\/\"><strong>ban<\/strong><\/a><\/span> from the UK.<\/p>\n<p>&#8211;<br \/>\nBy: Jonas Nyabor\/citifmonline.com\/Ghana<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Africa Centre for Parliamentary Affairs (ACEPA), has described as unfortunate the recent allegation of immigration-related offences by some current and former Members of Parliament. According to the civil society organization, the allegation dents the legislative body\u2019s integrity. [contextly_sidebar id=&#8221;gUaTauxgKJknFjzGvLIDhEUVh2kRVokB&#8221;]The British High Commissioner to Ghana, Jon Benjamin, in a letter leaked to the media earlier this [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":14,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":[],"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_social_meta":[],"jnews_override_counter":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[5427,507,3,6575],"class_list":["post-314860","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-top-stories","tag-acepa","tag-ghana-mps","tag-ghana-news","tag-visa-fraud"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/314860","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/14"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=314860"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/314860\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=314860"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=314860"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=314860"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}