Query NIA on its operations — Old Tafo MP
The Member of Parliament for Old Tafo who is also a ranking member of the Finance Committee of Parliament, Dr Akoto Osei, has stated that the National Identification Authority (NIA) should be queried on its operations before any permissions can be given by Parliament for a new project.
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He said the authority had to be made to account for all the money that had been spent on its previous activities.
He said this in an interview with the Daily Graphic when his views were sought as a member of the Finance Committee, which had previously approved funds for the NIA's operations.
He said the authority had to give a good explanation for what went wrong with past efforts and valid reasons for the new project it was to embark on.
"They will have to account for all money lost.
"We need to build on what is, not scrap what has been done," he maintained.
Judgement debt
Mr Akoto Osei was also of the view that the Former Executive Secretary, Dr William Ahadzie, would have a case against the governments if he were to sue.
Dr Ahadzie was on April 2013 asked to proceed on leave, while the government set up a committee headed by the President's Special Assistant on Priority Projects, Mr Stephen Adiyiya, to look into the workings of the NIA.
In November 2013, the government stopped the payment of his salary and nothing has been heard about the findings of the committee.
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Mr Lawrence Narteh, the Special Assistant to the minister in charge of Development Authorities, Ahmed Mustapha, told the Daily Graphic that the committee had finished its work and was to present the report.
He said challenges, including scheduling a date for the presentation, had accounted for the delay, but gave an assurance that the report was ready for a resolution of the issue.
Challenges
Almost half of the biometric data collected from 15 million Ghanaians from July 2008 to September 2013 in nationwide mass registration exercises for a National Identification System (NIS) have been lost.
Technical challenges encountered on the field, and issues about the quality of the images of applicants and of fingerprints collected from applicants were partly responsible for the loss.
Out of the 15 million, data from nine million Ghanaians were successfully retrieved and stored in the database of the National Identification Authority (NIA).
Half of what was successfully retrieved and stored, 4.5 million, have been processed with Personal Identification Numbers (PIN), with 2.7 million cards having been printed out of the number.
Out of the printed number of cards, 900 thousand have so far been distributed.
These were some of the revelations made by Mr Osei Kwame Griffith, the head of technology and biometrics, at a media briefing.
These challenges, among several others, such as the lack of funding and technical capacity, are what the NIA is advancing to re-register a new 15 million Ghanaians, starting from November I, when a pilot registration would be conducted.
The exercise, announced this month and described as the expanded registration exercise by the NIA, will be conducted by the Identification Management Systems (IMS), a subsidiary of the Margins ID Group, under licence from the NIA.
The Executive Secretary of the NIA, Dr Josiah Cobbah, explained that upon the completion of the expanded exercise, a further licence would be given to another company to mop up all others, until all Ghanaians and foreigners living in the country had been identified.
However, the proposal has to go through parliamentary approval.
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