NIA must register children in mass exercise before charging premium

The National Identification Authority (NIA) has started an exercise to register children between six and 14 years at its Accra Premium Centre.

The exercise will later be extended to other premium centres and district offices across the country.

This will enable it to capture all persons across all age brackets into the national identity database.

Curiously, however, many have questioned why this has been limited to the NIA’s premium centre, which attracts a charge of GH¢310 for both adults and children.

Aside from children being treated differently in many issues and subjects across the world, the NIA Law (the National Identity Register Act, 2008 (Act 750) also mandates it to first do mass registration of any category of citizens.

The law also requires the authority to find other efficient methods for an individual to furnish personal information to be recorded in the register.

This is where the NIA has devised other means to slap charges if the people do not avail themselves of the opportunity in the mass exercise.

This is why the NIA has conducted several mass registrations, both in the first registration exercise around 2008-2010 and the second, which started from 2017.

During the July 2008 and May 2010 mass registration, 11.98 million Ghanaians were captured into the database.

So far, the NIA has indicated registering a little over 18.95 million Ghanaians onto its system, printed 18.84 million cards, and more than 17.74 million applicants have gone to collect their cards.

Out of the number, a super majority of them obtained the cards through the free mass registration exercise and the NIA district offices, where the charges are lower.

With the government facilitating to enable the issuance of the card at birth, that is covering children under five, the only gap left was the six- to 14-year-old bracket.

Last year, through an NIA-National Health Insurance Authority (NHIA) collaboration, cards were to be issued to this bracket of children in a mass registration exercise covering schools, communities, churches, mosques and other places, where the children could be found.

This was under a Joint Cooperative Agreement (JCA) signed between the two institutions in 2024 to register approximately 6.2 million children in schools.

As a follow-up, the NIA on September 26, 2024, announced that it would register and issue instant Ghana Cards to 6.2 million children between the ages of six and 16 years, from October last year to March this year.

The Deputy Director in charge of Operations of the National Health Insurance Authority (NHIA), Alfred Gazari, who disclosed the news in the concept and operational plan in Accra, said the exercise would be done in collaboration with the NHIA.

The exercise, initially scheduled to begin on October 7, aimed to register 2.85 million children within five months during the first phase across 170 operational districts.

Being part of the final phase of the Ghana Card registration exercise, he said it was expected to capture the biometric data of at least two-thirds of children who would instantly be issued with dual-interface smart biometric cards. The cards, he said, would be valid for 10 years.

Conservatively, if the two previous mass registrations in 2008 and 2019 captured more than 11 million Ghanaians in each case, against the current total registered citizens of 18 million, it stands to reason that the majority of the cardholders used the mass registration system.

This is where the Daily Graphic joins the silent majority of parents and guardians in asking why the NIA is going ahead to start the registration of children from a premium centre without exhausting a properly so-called mass registration exercise, which should be extensively advertised through the mass media before charging a premium for it.

According to the NIA, its mass registration targeting children rolled out in 2024, which many know little about, was able to capture about 377,036 in 169 schools against a three-million target before it was halted due to technical and financial constraints.

The question on the minds of parents and guardians is why capture so little during a mass registration, which was halted for no fault of the public, only to start a premium registration that now requires them to part with GH¢310? Imagine what a parent with two children or more would have to spend.

The Daily Graphic expresses support for the NHIA-NIA collaboration that is leading to the registration of children within the specified bracket, but calls on the actors to focus attention on the mass registration before shifting to the money zone, the 11 Premium Centres.

Our call is premised on the fact that these children are scattered across the country, including small towns and villages, where many will not be able to pay before obtaining the national document.