Ghanaians intending to obtain entry visa to the United States will soon be relieved of the long waiting period before getting an appointment for interview, embassy officials have said.

The officials at the Consular Section of the embassy in Accra said there were plans to cut short the current waiting periods for visa applicants from 12 weeks to two or three weeks.

The head of the Consular Section and First Secretary at the Embassy, Steven B. Groh, said the rationale was to speed up the visa application process and reduce the backlog of applications. "Starting November 2003, we will increase the number of individual cases that we interview per day from 125 to 200 so we are hoping that over the next six months we can reduce the long waiting period from the current 12 weeks down to something much reasonable, ideally two to three weeks," Groh told The Chronicle in an interview on Wednesday shortly after a working lunch with newsmen.

This development is expected to bring relief to travelers who intend to visit the US, but who most of the times have to miss traveling deadlines due to the long waiting period before getting an appointment for a visa interview.

Although Groh said the missing of initial traveling dates did not necessarily impact negatively or otherwise on applicants interview, many who were refused visas usually tended to attribute this extensive waiting period to their denial.

However, Groh said the long period was due to the resources available at the Embassy as against the demand for entry visas.

Currently the Embassy can boast of only five members of staff who have to deal with the huge numbers of applicants that turned out for interviews on a weekly basis, Chronicle gathered.

"We interview over 400 individuals a week and hope to increase this by 600 starting November. In addition, we received other applications."

In August, Groh said, the Embassy received newly trained officers but was unable to increase the number of cases per day because of the backlog of application.

The US Embassy in Accra issued well over 1,000 of entry visas/tourism visas to eligible Ghanaians each year. But as compared to the number that is turned down in the same period it is nothing to write home about.

On the issue of the 2005 Diversity Immigrant Visa Programme (DV-2005), Groh said the introduction of the electronic system was a way of taking advantage of the current technological age and also to reduce fraud, which had been identified with the paper application.

It has been identified that most immigrant visa applicants submit multiple entry forms purposely to better their chances being selected as a possible candidate.

The DV lottery visa was introduced in 1995 by US congressional mandate on an annual basis by the Department of State and conducted under Section 203(c) of the US Immigration and Nationality Act (INA).

The annual DV programme makes permanent residence visas available to persons meeting the simple but strict eligibility requirements.

For the 2004 entry results Ghana came out second behind Nigeria with 7,040 applicants being selected.