SIX Ghanaians who were due to attend a two day management training conference and exhibition in Dublin this week have had to cancel their trip because of delays in issuing visas.
The organiser of the conference, Positive Projects Ltd, has criticised the attitude of the Department of Justice to the applications.
Mr Paul Beatty, a director of the company, said yesterday: "Here is a high powered foreign delegation, coming to learn from Ireland's reputation for world class management skills, and all we can show them is how a bunch of Government clerks operate a Third World style bureaucracy."
The Department has declined to comment on the specific cases but it is understood that there was some confusion about the composition of the delegation. Positive Projects described it initially as a United Nations sponsored group and then as a group of businessmen. It is now thought that they may in fact be civil servants.
However, the company could not provide details of the visa applicants and refused to give commitments to the Department that the Ghanaians would return home after the conference ended.
Mr Sid McFarland, a director of Positive Projects, said yesterday that the Department "was asking us to act as guardians. Naturally we had to decline that offer."
Ireland does not have diplomatic links with Ghana. The Department was trying to contact the Ghanaian government yesterday afternoon to clarify whether the applicants were civil servants.
The conference and exhibition, which conclude at the O'Reilly hall in UCD today, are about ways of improving management, personnel and communication techniques.