NIA moves Ghana Card registration to Ashanti Region

The National Identification Authority (NIA) would from December 11, 2019, to January 8, 2020, move the registration of Ghanaian residents and issuing them with Ghana cards to the Ashanti Region.

The authority intends to register an estimated figure of over 2.8 million people in the Ashanti Region.

The NIA says it will deploy a total of 15,000 registration officers to the 833 registration centres that it would set up in the region.

So far, the exercise has been conducted in 11 regions throughout Ghana out of which over two million cards have been issued.

Addressing a press conference at Ejisu on Monday [December 2, 2019], the Executive Secretary of the NIA, Prof Kenneth Agyeman Attafuah said the authority would operate from 47 district offices.

He said a number of centres would be set under the district offices and appealed to the residents to move to any of the centres closer to them to get themselves registered.

He warned staff of NIA against extorting money from the people and also asked residents not to pay any money to any official for the purposes of getting registered for the card.

He said the process was free of charge and that residents would only pay for the card if they misplaced it or during a renewal.

Foreigners 

Prof Attafuah explained that even though foreigners would also be registered, the mass registration exercise was open to only Ghanaians aged 15 years and above.

He said those in the diaspora would also be registered under a different exercise and defined a Ghanaian as anyone born of a Ghanaian parent.

He said foreigners who were legally or permanently resident in Ghana were required by the law to register with the NIA

The items required for the registration he said were a birth certificate or a Ghanaian passport, a digital address and any other forms of identification such as the Social Security and National Insurance Trust card, Driving License, Tax Identification Number and a National Health Insurance card.

Prof Attafuah, however, explained that with the exception of the digital address and the birth certificate or passport, the other IDs were not mandatory for one to be registered.

Vouching 

He said those without passport or a birth certificate could get a family member who has been registered and issued with the Ghana card to vouch for them but warned that those who would be using this system to make money and vouch for people they had no relations with, would be dealt with by the law.

Besides that, he said those who were unable to get family members to vouch for them, would need to find two people who have already registered and who could vouch for their nationality to enable them to register.

Statistics

As of now, Prof Attafuah said the NIA has registered a total of 4,857,845 Ghanaians, printed a total of 4,291,840 cards and issued 2,695,478 Ghana cards.

He said the Ashanti region is the region the Authority is targeting its largest number to be registered and believed that the exercise would be successful as the authority now has the full complement of its equipment.