General News of Friday, 28 June 2019
Source: citinewsroom.com
2019-06-28
Some applicants battling for space at the Ngleshie Amanfro Community Library Centre
The registration process for the National Identification Card, also known as Ghana Card, has been fraught with several challenges.
Applicants complain of long queues, network failure, malfunctioning equipment and other hectic processes they are compelled to go through before securing their cards.
This has made the exercise very tedious for most applicants who have had to leave their work to the registration centres.
Responding to such concerns on the Citi Breakfast Show, the Head of Corporate Affairs at the National Identification Authority, Francis Palmdeti, argued that the verification process is the cause of the delays.
“We have had challenges with the network, we have challenges with people who have registered in the past, whose information has changed. Some other people have changed their date of birth and name, they haven’t gone through the process of gazetting such changes, and so when these things happen we cannot verify, print and give them the card,” he said.
In May, the Centre for Socioeconomic Studies (CSS) petitioned the Commission on Human Rights and Administrative Justice (CHRAJ) over supposed anomalies in the ongoing national identification card registration exercise being spearheaded by the National Identification Authority.
CSS believes a lot of Ghanaians seeking to receive their cards are being frustrated by processes adopted by the NIA leading to unnecessary long queues at registration centres.
CSS also believes that NIA is not complying with a High Court ruling on the specific particulars needed for the Ghana card registration.
According to CSS, although the High Court classified particulars needed for the exercise in section 4 of the law governing the registration, as “mandatory with no exclusion to the information required” the group insists that “the NIA has used its own whims as regards the personal information listed under Section 4 of Act 750 in dealing with registrants.”
“This conduct by the NIA raises serious public concerns and has resulted in public confusion and frustration over which particulars are expected of citizens who wish to be registered for the Ghana Card. By this conduct, the CSS strongly believes that the NIA has failed to structure its services in accordance with law.”
