{"id":1164515,"date":"2022-08-03T10:36:52","date_gmt":"2022-08-03T10:36:52","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2022\/08\/03\/bawumia-explains-i-will-choose-ghana-card-over-1000-interchanges-comment\/"},"modified":"2022-08-03T10:36:52","modified_gmt":"2022-08-03T10:36:52","slug":"bawumia-explains-i-will-choose-ghana-card-over-1000-interchanges-comment","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2022\/08\/03\/bawumia-explains-i-will-choose-ghana-card-over-1000-interchanges-comment\/","title":{"rendered":"Bawumia explains &#8216;I will choose Ghana Card over 1,000 interchanges&#8217; comment"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><\/p>\n<div id=\"article-text\" style=\"line-height: 2; letter-spacing: -0.5px;font-size: 18px;\">\n<p>                        <!--p class=\"ky_saved_articles_link\"><span class=\"ky_saved_articles_hide\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"\" class=\"ky_saved_articles_img\" alt=\"Bawumia explains 'I will choose Ghana Card over 1,000 interchanges' comment\" title=\"Bawumia explains 'I will choose Ghana Card over 1,000 interchanges' comment\"><\/span> Bookmark<\/p-->\n<p>Vice President Mahamudu Bawumia has strongly defended the controversial comment about his preference for Ghana Card over a thousand interchanges.<\/p>\n<p>Speaking at the Accra Business School, Dr Bawumia said the national identification card is more beneficial than 1,000 interchanges.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWe have implemented a national identification system and today we have 16 million Ghanaians with unique identities and that is a major transformation. And sometimes a lot of people don\u2019t even appreciate what the impact of the Ghana card is.<\/p>\n<figure class=\"wp-block-embed is-type-video is-provider-youtube wp-block-embed-youtube wp-embed-aspect-16-9 wp-has-aspect-ratio\">\n<p><div class=\"youtube-embed\" data-video_id=\"gjjPmHPTbFg\"><iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"I will choose Ghana Card over 1000 interchanges \u2013 Bawumia\" width=\"696\" height=\"392\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/gjjPmHPTbFg?feature=oembed&#038;enablejsapi=1\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/div>\n<\/p>\n<\/figure>\n<p>\u201cBut if you gave me 1,000 interchanges and a Ghana Card, I will choose the Ghana Card because it is more impactful,\u201d he said at the Accra Business School.<\/p>\n<p>This comment generated an uproar among a section of the public and the opposition NDC.<\/p>\n<p>Over two weeks on, the Vice President has responded to his critics. He sought to justify the comment while addressing participants at the Civil Service Awards ceremony on Friday.<\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" width=\"100%\" height=\"300\" scrolling=\"no\" frameborder=\"no\" allow=\"autoplay\" src=\"https:\/\/w.soundcloud.com\/player\/?url=https%3A\/\/api.soundcloud.com\/tracks\/1314273910&#038;color=%23ff5500&#038;auto_play=false&#038;hide_related=false&#038;show_comments=true&#038;show_user=true&#038;show_reposts=false&#038;show_teaser=true&#038;visual=true\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>\u201cYou can imagine the furore it caused with people asking is this man crazy?\u201d he quizzed.<\/p>\n<p>Dr. Bawumia, in explaining his comment, said \u201cfor the first time in the history of our country we have a unique identification system which is biometric and so we can uniquely identify every individual whether they are alive or dead.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>This situation, he believes, will eliminate ghost names from public payrolls and potentially save Ghana millions of cedis.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cSo immediately \u2026 the case of ghost names on our public sector payroll will become a thing of the past\u2026at National Service Scheme we found 14,000 ghost workers saving annually 114 million Ghana cedis just from one institution because we look for unique identity. Just a couple of days ago SSNIT reported finding 27,000 ghost pensioners and they were being paid 327 million cedis a year.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>The Ghana card number, according to the Vice President, has also become the TIN number for Ghanaians and will help integrate databases and improve tax collection and consequently rake in more revenue for the country.<\/p>\n<p>These savings among many other benefits Ghana stands to gain, he insists, informed his comment about preferring a Ghana Card over a thousand interchanges because not only will it save the country millions of cedis, but will also help cut back on corrupt practices.<\/p>\n<p>                <!-- Post Tags --><\/p><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Vice President Mahamudu Bawumia has strongly defended the controversial comment about his preference for Ghana Card over a thousand interchanges. Speaking at the Accra Business School, Dr Bawumia said the national identification card is more beneficial than 1,000 interchanges. \u201cWe have implemented a national identification system and today we have 16 million Ghanaians with unique [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1164520,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[187],"tags":[2032,341,6099,1332,2058,85,4790],"class_list":["post-1164515","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-politics","tag-bawumia","tag-card","tag-choose","tag-comment","tag-explains","tag-ghana","tag-interchanges"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2022\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1164515","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2022\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2022\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2022\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2022\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1164515"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2022\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1164515\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2022\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1164515"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2022\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1164515"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2022\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1164515"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}