According to the National Identification Authority, some 18,000 completed Ghana cards sit within the office of the Authority in the Upper East Region unclaimed. The unclaimed cards present a huge challenge to the Authority as more digital and physical space is needed for the new registrants.
As such, the NIA is calling on all persons who registered for the Ghana cards to visit the various district, municipal or regional offices to pick up their cards.
Ibrahim Awudu, the Upper East Regional Registration Officer for the NIA said this when he spoke on A1 Radio’s Day Break Upper East Show, today, Monday, July 18, 2022.
“Currently, we have a huge number of Ghana cards in our offices. People are not turning up for their cards. It is making our work difficult because we expect that they should come for their cards but they are not coming. We are filing into the system new records so it is giving us a lot of problems.”
” … the cards are sitting here, they are not coming for them.”
To help resident access their completed programmes, the NIA is contemplating outreach exercises to help in the distribution of the cards piled up at the various office of the NIA in the region.
“In the coming months, we will do an outreach exercise and community issuance of cards. These are some of the things that we will be doing with the cooperation of the districts, the DCEs and other organisations that may support us with certain logistics,” he said.
“We also call on you the media to educate the people to tell them to come and pick their cards. If you do not come and you go about complaining [that the cards have not come, meanwhile] the cards have been printed. We have got a lot of them. During the mass registration, lots of cards are sitting in our offices. More than 18,000 cards.”
Mr. Awudu explained that it is unclear why some of the registrants have failed to pick up their cards after completing the process.
Meanwhile, the National Identification Authority (NIA) has explained that there has been an increasing demand for the Ghana card within the past few weeks in the Upper East Region because some communities, driven by excessive politics, decided not to be a part of the mass registrations exercise for the card, along with the subsequent mop-up exercise.
This came to light when the Upper East Regional Registration Officer for the NIA, Ibrahim Awudu spoke on A1 Radio’s Day Break Upper East Show, today, Monday, July 18, 2022.
A lot of people did not take the opportunity to register in this region. There were too many political talks about it. People bought into it. It affected a lot of them. Now that people are feeling that and seeing the need for the Ghana card, they are now rushing. That is why we have a huge number rushing to our offices.”
Source: A1radioonline.com|101.1MHz|Mark Kwasi Ahumah Smith|Ghana
