Professor Kenneth Agyemang-Attafuah, the Executive Secretary of the National Identification Authority (NIA), has said, the Authority was in the process of recruiting 1,026 permanent staff to man its regional and district offices across the 16 regions, adding that interviewing of applicants was ongoing.
He said it was also refurbishing the offices allocated to the NIA in the various assemblies and hoped by August this year, they would be fully functional.
Addressing the media in Accra, Prof. Agyemang-Attafuah said the NIA employed 70,000 officials, deployed 2,000 Commissioners for Oaths, and shared biographic data with the National Health Insurance Authority, SSNIT, and the Ghana Revenue Authority.
The NIA, he said, had opened permanent offices in all 16 Regions and 275 Operational Districts & Municipalities in the country and that the permanent offices will provide continuous registration services including registration of all citizens from age zero to infinity free of charge; issuance of printed Ghana Cards to applicants; registration of all foreigners legally and permanently resident in Ghana at a fee; replacement of lost, stolen, damaged or defaced Ghana Cards at a fee; and update of personal records of applicants in the NIR.
To ensure effective implementation of the National Identification System (NIS) Project, Prof. Attafuah said several activities were undertaken before the commencement of the nationwide Mass Registration Exercise in April 2019.
They included the transfer of backend technical systems from IMS II to a secure facility, transfer of Public Key Infrastructure (PKI) of the NIS to NITA, launch of the first phase of the Ghana Card on September 15, 2017, redesigning of the NIS architecture to issue smart and dual-interfaced cards and upgrade of the hard and software components of NIA’s data-bearing assets.
The others, he said were the passage of the National Identity Register (Amendment) Act, 2017 (Act 950), the passage of National Identity Register (Amendment) Regulations, 2018 (L.I. 2356), upgrade of NIA’s Tier Two Data Centre to an ultra-modern Tier Three Data Centre, negotiate with ECOWAS for the integration of the Ghana Card with the ECOWAS ID Card, liaising with Judicial Service of Ghana to recruit 1500 Ghanaians as Commissioners for Oaths and recruitment and training of over 7000 temporary staff for field registration.
Source: Mybrytfmonline.com/Kofi Atakora
