“We deserve a pat on the back” – South Africa High Commission says despite errors in evacuees’ records

Ghana’s High Commissioner to South Africa, Benjamin Quashie, has defended the team responsible for evacuating Ghanaians fleeing xenophobic attacks, arguing that errors identified in 15 out of 1,964 evacuee records should not overshadow the work done to ensure their safe return.

The defence follows the identification of discrepancies in the records of 15 evacuees, including dates of birth that appeared to fall in the future, raising questions about the accuracy of documentation used in processing reintegration and transportation allowances.

The Ghana High Commission in Pretoria has acknowledged clerical errors in the records, which came to light following a data analysis of information relating to the 1,964 Ghanaians evacuated from South Africa.

Speaking on Accra-based Citi FM, Mr Quashie said the mistakes occurred under intense pressure as officials worked around the clock to rescue Ghanaians caught up in the xenophobic attacks.

“If out of 1,964 and we’ve made errors in just 15 names, I think that we deserve a pat on the back, especially with the kind of pressure we had and how we had to quickly improvise and ensure that there was value for money,” he said.

“We had to quickly work around the clock to get them out of harm’s way and get them into Ghana,” he added.

Mr Quashie also rejected suggestions that the High Commission had misrepresented information to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, insisting that the records submitted were based on documents provided by South Africa’s Border Management Authority (BMA).

According to him, three agencies were involved in the evacuation process: South Africa’s Department of Home Affairs, the BMA and the Ghana High Commission.

He explained that after screening the evacuees at the airport, the BMA supplied the High Commission with documents containing their names, passport numbers, dates of birth and other personal information.

The documents, referred to as body receipts, were provided in PDF format and could not be edited by the High Commission, he said.

Mr Quashie said officials later detected clerical errors involving the transposition of dates in some passport records, particularly dates of birth and passport expiry dates.

He added that the High Commission subsequently contacted the BMA to report the discrepancies and was informed that the errors had been corrected on the South African authority’s end.

“The information that we had is what we gave to the Ministry, and sincerely and fairly, the Ministry only spoke to the document that we sent to them. And that document came from the Border Management Authority of South Africa,” he said.

High Commissioner accepts responsibility

Despite maintaining that the High Commission could not alter the original documents supplied by the BMA, Mr Quashie accepted responsibility for the errors identified in the records.

He said the mission had raised the discrepancies with the South African authority to ensure they were addressed.

The controversy has drawn attention to the accuracy of records used in the evacuation exercise, particularly in relation to the processing of transportation and reintegration allowances for the affected Ghanaians.

The evacuation was organised to bring Ghanaians caught up in xenophobic attacks in South Africa back to safety.