Ghana Card an essential need

The quest to possess the Ghana Card as the national identity has become imperative because of the National Communications Authority’s directive to use the card as the main requisite document for SIM card re-registration by the telecommunications companies.

Moreover, the government has said it plans to align the taxpayer number, PIN, with the Ghana Card from March 31, and that it will become the only ID document required for all financial transactions with institutions under the authority of the Bank of Ghana from July 1.

These directives have made the National Identification Authority (NIA), the issuing agency, very busy, pooling and directing all its resources to get as many people as possible issued with the card.

This has created endless queues at the NIA’s 276 districts and 16 regional offices, as Ghanaians, as well as foreigners, make efforts to own the card before the deadline. Even with the creation of an additional five new registration centres, four of which are set up in football stadiums, many people are still biding their time.

Already, we know that more than 16 million Ghanaians have been issued with the card, while efforts are being made to register more. We are happy with the frantic steps by the NIA to ensure that every eligible person is issued with the card.

While we at the Daily Graphic appreciate the efforts being put in by the NIA regarding the issuance of the cards, we think given the benefits of national identification, a lot more attention should be directed at getting more Ghanaians registered.

We are at a loss as to why there are still queues with high numbers being recorded, even though the NIA has announced that 16 million Ghanaians, representing 85 per cent of the adult population, have been registered.

Equally worrying is the fact that two million of the cards are yet be collected by their owners. Initially, the challenge with the collection was the backlog from the mass registration exercise and the technical problems that made it impossible for the cards to be given promptly.

However, those have been resolved, but some people still failed to report at the collection points on scheduled times.

On hindsight, using 291 district offices as registration centres for the whole country was woefully inadequate, especially looking at the population density in each geographical district, coupled with the fact that over 18 million were being registered for the card.

The NIA should have opened more centres in the districts to reduce the numbers at the offices and also ensure a more efficient and faster process.

The Daily Graphic takes a very keen interest in the Ghana Card because it can immensely change the game for the economy as far as the government’s digitalisation agenda is concerned. It will help formalise the informal sector and also improve processes to acquire government services such as passport and driver’s licence acquisition, filing of tax returns, among others.

Already, the Ghana Card also qualifies as a travel document to all ECOWAS countries; and, thankfully, the International Civil Aviation Organisation has given its green light to its use as an e-passport.

The Daily Graphic hopes that the government will find ways to incentivise adherence to the use of the Ghana Card and increase public awareness, as well as stricter enforcement for not complying with its use by government agencies and state institutions.

We believe that the use of the card should be a means to foster long-term trust in the digital economy.

Finally, the government and the private sector can continue to design and shape collaborations in order to leverage data from digital identity systems that advance the public good.

By aggregating and anonymising certain data sets, both the government and the private sector can actively contribute to building and shaping a more robust data ecosystem that can serve both social and economic agenda.