NIA urged to ensure printed Ghana Cards are distributed

The Member of Parliament for Dormaa East, Paul Twum-Barimah, has urged the National Identification Authority (NIA) to speedily distribute Ghana Cards it has printed but the owners are yet to receive them.

There are about 640,000 printed Ghana Cards in the custody of the NIA across the country, the owners are yet to receive them.

It is either the owners have refused to go for them or the cards have found themselves in different collection locations and the processes to distribute them have been slow.

Speaking to Daily Graphic's correspondent in Parliament, Nana Konadu Agyeman, the Dormaa East MP said since the cards are needed for business and other transactions, the NIA should speedily distribute them.

The NIA already has a plan it was relying on to distribute the printed cards.

Mr Twum-Barimah, who is the New Patriotic Party representative for Dormaa East in the Bono Region recounted that when the NIA boss Prof. Ken Attafuah was in Parliament recently, he told the House that by the year 2024, it would have registered 19 million people who would have attained the voting age.

He said the NIA has several options at its disposal to strategically distribute the cards and should therefore follow through to get the cards out.

NIA expedited printing of Ghana Cards

Meanwhile the NIA has announced that from Saturday, March 18, 2023, it commenced the expedited printing of the backlog of 541,529 records accumulated since July 2022.

The backlog, the NIA said arose from shortage of blank cards due to financial challenges.

Preparatory works for the expedited printing started on Wednesday, March 15, 2023 and included the configuration of printers, print servers and laminators, as well as the deployment of additional staff from NIA’s Regional and District offices to augment the staff capacity at the Head Office, a statement issued by the NIA Corporate Affairs Directorate said.

The commencement of the expedited printing follows the payment of GH¢100 million by the government to CalBank PLC, which then caused the release of a quantity of blank cards to NIA on Tuesday March 14, 2023.

The printing of the blank cards is expected to last for 11 days, ending on March 29, 2023.

It said at the end of the exercise, NIA will make the cards available at its Regional and District Offices nationwide and announce to the public when the persons who registered for the cards since July 2022 should go to their respective NIA offices for the cards to be issued to them.