Over 718,000 registered Ghanaians yet to recieve cards – NIA

More than 718, 000 Ghanaians who registered for the Ghana Card are yet to receive them, the Chief Executive Officer of the National Identification Authority (NIA) Professor Ken Attafuah has disclosed.

Many citizens have raised issues about the slow pace of processing and issuance of cards with some indicating that their cards are not ready even though they participated in the registration which began last year.

He attributed a variety of reasons for the development even though he admitted “718, 414 across the country” do not have access to their cards.

Prof Attafuah categorized the group as people whose cards have been printed but not issued or others whose cards have not been printed.

“There was a huge backlog that was created way back from the beginning of the registration exercise due to network challenges and so there are a lot of cards that are cleared for printing but not yet printed and therefore described as ‘in printing state’. It doesn’t mean that it will take three or four months to be printed but it is in a queue,” he explained in an interview on Joy FM on Thursday.

Out of a total of 16 regions, registration has been completed in 11. It is currently ongoing in the Ashanti Region where the NIA boss has described the exercise as “disappointing.”

Despite sending a larger number of registration officers and increasing the number of registration machines, the process there has been slow.

Prof Attafuah has also expressed regret over the recent arrest of four of its officers in the Ashanti Region for misconduct.

The arrests, which occurred between January 3 and January 6, 2020.

It was the result of a collaboration between NIA and some aggrieved applicants who provided incriminating evidence on the conduct of the suspects and also identified them to the Police.

The suspects were picked up for engaging in registration malpractices at the ongoing exercise which ends on January 16, 2020.