Omanghana
The Data Protection Commission (DPC) has warned against the public disclosure of personal information belonging to 1,964 Ghanaians evacuated from South Africa, urging state institutions, lawmakers and media organizations to safeguard their privacy.
In a statement issued on October 20, 2026, the Commission addressed the parliamentary Minority Caucus, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Regional Integration, and media houses over the handling and circulation of the evacuees’ records.
The intervention followed the ministry’s publication of documents containing names, signatures and records of financial allowances paid to the returnees. The documents were released in response to allegations by the Minority that more than GH¢16 million allocated to the repatriation exercise had not been accounted for.
The DPC stressed that demands for transparency and accountability do not justify unrestricted access to identifiable personal information. It urged the institutions involved to ensure that efforts to explain public expenditure also protect the individuals whose details appear in official records.
According to the Commission, exposing names and signatures could leave the evacuees vulnerable to identity theft, fraud and targeted scams. It also raised concerns about their safety and dignity, given the threats and xenophobic unrest that prompted their evacuation from South Africa.
The Commission noted that Parliament and the Foreign Affairs Ministry are registered data controllers in good standing. However, it emphasised that this status does not remove their continuing obligations under the Data Protection Act, 2012 (Act 843).
It called for immediate restrictions on access to personal identifiers whose publication could not be lawfully justified, alongside the redaction of such details from publicly available documents.
Media organisations and others handling the records were also urged to exercise due diligence before sharing or reproducing them.
The DPC said it would undertake a regulatory review to examine the legal basis for the disclosure and assess whether the handling of the records infringed the evacuees’ constitutional right to privacy.
Source: Omanghana
