Parliament c’ttees commend Margins ID Group - For Ghana Card investment

Two committees of Parliament have commended Margins ID Group and its subsidiary, Intelligent Card Production System (ICPS), a Ghanaian-owned security printing company, for committing the needed investment into printing the Ghana card for the National Identification Authority (NIA).

Members of the Subsidiary Legislation and Defence and Interior committees said the acquisition of a state-of-the-art security printing factory had enhanced the NIA’s capacity to provide Ghanaians and foreigners with the Ghana cards.

That, they believed, was helping Ghana to have a strong database that could be relied on to bolster Ghana’s digitalisation agenda, promote fiscal stability and tax compliance by individuals and businesses.

Visit

The committee, led by the chairman of the Subsidiary Legislation Committee, Dr Dominic Ayine, and the Vice-Chairperson of the Defence and Interior Committee, Ophelia Mensah Hayford who is also Minister of Environment, Science, Technology and Innovation designate, made the commendation when they toured the factory at Spintex in Accra last Tuesday.

They were there to learn at firsthand, the operations and challenges facing the company which commenced operations in 1990.

They were later taken round the various sections of the factory where the MPs were exposed to real-time production of the Ghana card and other security documents and labels of various public institutions such as the Ministry of Education, Bank of Ghana, Ghana Police Service, Driver and Vehicle Licensing Agency, Passport Office, Social Security and National Trust Authority, National Communication Authority, Ghana Statistical Service and other multinational companies.

Speaking to the Daily Graphic after the tour of the company, Dr Ayine, who is also the national Democrate Congress MP for Bolgatanga East, expressed delight that members of the two committees had been exposed to the multifunctional character of the Ghana card.

He said aside from the Ghana card being used for voters registration, it could also be used to promote fiscal stability, improve tax compliance and secure Ghana’s immigration system.

He, however, called for more public education to be undertaken on the diverse application of the Ghana card to allow Ghanaians to appreciate its importance to national development.

Harmonised database system

Briefing the committee members on the operations of the company, the Chief Executive Officer of Margins Group, Moses K. Baiden, expressed worry that Ghana currently had a weak database, hence efforts must be made to clean it up and put in place “a credible database” that could be relied on for national development.

To address that challenge, he said Ghana’s database must be harmonised to build a clean and transparent database system to make Ghana, a forward-looking country.

In line with that, he said the database of the NIA, financial institutions, and public organisations must be harmonised to curb fraud in the banking industry and also fight terrorism.

He said unlike other African countries such as Gambia, Tanzania and Senegal where national IDS were sold, Ghanaians could obtain the Ghana card for free.

“All the Ghana cards you see in Ghanaians’ pockets are financed by us through this factory.

 So, 30 million cards and $180 million of private sector money are in people’s pockets for free.

“The government will pay for that at 10 per cent through the financing model and fees which Parliament has passed,” he said.

NIA database

On the issue of which entity keeps the database of Ghanaians, the CEO told the MPs that the law gave the NIA the mandate to keep all the database generated by the Margins Group.

“In the private-public partnership contract, it is illegal for us as a private sector to keep data,” he explained.

He said the company had supplied the NIA approximately 22 million cards since 2019 and designed and built the hardware for biometric verification for the authority all over the country.

With chip technology evolving, he said this year, the company would release a new version of the Ghana card that would have more functionality than the current one.

He further informed the committee that $1.5 billion was calculated to be spent every 10 years on duplicated national ID card certificates of some 18 public institutions.

They include the Ministry of Education, Bank of Ghana, Ghana Police Service, Driver and Vehicle Licensing Agency, Passport Office, Social Security and National Trust Authority, National Communication Authority and the Ghana Statistical Service.

Capacity

Addressing the issue of whether the company had the ability to print enough Ghana cards, Mr Baiden said the company, between 2019 and the end of 2020 during the COVID-19 pandemic, registered 15.7 million people, with 85 per cent of undocumented adult Ghanaians.

He said the company did so with the system it built and financed while the NIA operated it.

“In one day, we registered and issued cards to 250,000 people, and the challenge we have is not a technical problem,” he said, and urged various stakeholders, particularly Parliament, to demonstrate the political will to help register more Ghanaians.

“Today, 17,804,405 Ghanaians are registered, 17,750,478 total cards printed and over 120 biometric, alpha-numeric and dataset request transfers are happening,” he said.