Starting next 2022, it is envisaged that every newborn child will within a year get a Ghana card number but the actual card will be issued when the child is grown and the biometrics are fully formed, according to Vice President, Dr. Mahamudu Bawumia.
He added that Government is integrating the births and deaths register with the databases of Ghana Health Service, National Identification Authority, Ghana Statistical Service, Immigration, and the Police that the record of births and deaths should be consistent across all these databases.
Vice President Bawumia made this known when he delivered a public lecture on how Ghana’s economy was being digitalized, held at the Ashesi University on Tuesday night.
He said the process of digitization of the records is almost complete and the three databases have been cleaned up and integrated.
The vice president said “I have paid to a government office during my time as Vice President was to the Births and Deaths Registry headquarters. It was chaotic, it was messy and it was sad. It turned out that the Births and Deaths Registry had three separate databases as registers for births and deaths and these databases were in silos. It is not surprising therefore that corruption and fake birth certificates thrived in this environment”.
“In linking the births and deaths registry to the NIA database, there will be tracking of pregnant women at antenatal clinics. To support the GHS in this exercise, 13,000 tablets (which were recently used in the population census) are being provided by the GSS to the GHS. Starting next year, it is envisaged that every newborn child will within a year get a Ghanacard number but the actual card will be issued when the child is grown and the biometrics are fully formed“.
Source: Mybrytfmonline.com/Kofi Atakora
