By Nathaniel Nartey
The National Identification Authority, NIA, says it is rectifying anomalies detected on one hundred and six thousand Ghana Cards before issuing them to their rightful owners.
This came up after the Authority successfully solved a technical challenge it encountered two weeks ago.
A Corporate Affairs officer of NIA, Henry Myers Aboagye revealed to GBC News that most of the instances where applicants do not receive their Ghana Cards months after registering, are cases of double registration dating back to 2008.
”We had a little technical hitch 2 weeks ago, but, as we speak our systems are working fine”, responding to concerns of applicants not being issued their Ghana cards, Mr Aboagye said, “in 2008 during Former President Kuffour’s time some registration was done, that data is still in our possession so if you are in that database and you register again and you change any of your details, the system matches your fingerprints with the details and it checks you out of the queue into an adjudication process. Our people will look into that data and if they are satisfied, then the data is processed and your card is printed”, he said.
Mr Aboagye said “we have very few cards that went into error that are not the fault of the applicant, about 106,662 out of 15.8 million so it’s not that big an issue. For those cards that have gone into error we are working on them to have the cards printed”.
Mr. Aboagye admitted that the Authority is faced with some challenges at its district offices, and the Authority has taken steps to resolve these issues.
Mr. Aboagye said all persons facing challenges using their Ghana Cards should report at any of its district offices for the problem to be rectified.
”Most people have already registered their SIM Cards with different cards and different names so when they try to attempt the merger, the telco matches the data they have with what is on the Ghana card, if it is different they return a response that your card is invalid. In that case you have to update your data with the telcos because the Ghana Card is valid”.
Mr. Aboagye disclosed that consultations are ongoing for a possible extension of the deadline for the SIM card re-registration.
”When we look at the statistics and there is the need to do an extension I don’t see why it cannot be done…I know there are some consultations going on but nothing firm yet”.