NIA Crippled ...Loses Millions Of US Dollars In ‘Fishy’ Deals With Private Company

The ailing National identification Authority in a queer contract with a private company- Identity Management System (IMS)-, has lost amounts almost grossing US$ 7 million which the authority could have made by itself since 2013.

Reliable sources within the NIA Board told the Republic newspaper that the amount includes IMS’s failure to pay its US$2.0 million mandatory license fees required to be paid upfront to the NIA and about US5 million service charges (comprising US$120 per foreigners) slapped on each of the 52,000 foreigners registered so far.

Before the NIA sealed the contract with IMS to start registering foreign nationals as part of the country’s National Identification System (NIS), the NIA using its own resources had registered over 40,000 foreign nationals in Ghana. Since the commencement of the Private Public Partnership project coded as the ‘FIMS’ in June 2013, IMS had barely registered 12,000 people yet the NIA allowed IMS to re-register all the initially registered 40,000 foreign nationals and charge them US$120 per foreigner.

Out of this amount, the NIA whose equipment and database was used agreed to be paid only US$23. While the private company made a windfall of US$5.04 million, the State-owned NIA could only contend with a paltry US$ 1.19 million from charges imposed on foreigners who registered for national identification cards. This paper can confirm the strange sharing mechanism is contained in the project contract between IMS and NIA dubbed Project Agreement for Foreign Identifications Management System.

When questioned by the Republic why IMS has failed to settle its license fees despite the windfall it has made from registering foreign nationals, the CEO, Moses Baiden explained that they only paid US$ 500,000 of the amount because state institutions like the Ghana Immigration Service (GIS) who were supposed to give IMS access to database of foreigners in Ghana failed to oblige them, forcing the company to resort to its own ingenuity to source the required data of foreigners in Ghana.

However, inquiries by this paper about the whereabouts of the money IMS paid as part of its license fees cannot be traced. Bertha Dzeble, the Public Relations Officer (PRO) of the NIA did not have an idea of what the money was used for when approached by this paper. The source from the NIA board charged that the refusal to settle the US$ 2million was a clear breach of contract.

The NIA has been fraught with operational challenges since 2003 when it was set up. Most of this challenges bordered on a perennial lack of financial resources to undertake its mandate of registering people for the NIS. This forced the NIA to adopt a Public Private Partnership (PPP) where a private company was invited to take up the responsibility of registering foreigners while the NIA focused on registering Ghanaians.

IMS was awarded the contract and was required to bring in equipment necessary for its operations. However, sources have told this paper that the company is mostly relying on the facilities of the NIA, and has not met its part of the investment requirements, yet it is taking a chunk of the revenue derived from the registration exercise.

For example, although the exercise required about 400 thumbprint machines to conveniently capture data at the registration centres across the country, only eight of such machines are currently being use; hence the inability to speed-up the process. A grossly under-resourced NIA has been forced to approach the World Bank and the China Integrated Circuit Design Corporation (CIDC) limited for a loan facility of US$ 21m and US$115m respectively to upgrade its systems, the Republic can confirm. “…so why should we go in for a PPP. Meaning we are going to give the money to the PPP people who don’t have money to take the contract,” the source who wants to remain anonymous told this paper.

Under the project, IMS was supposed to secure all reasonably necessary resources (technical and financial) required for the Project and “Develop all reasonably necessary infrastructures including the installation of the hardware platform …” However, reliable sources have said IMS has not been able to fulfil a substantial part of this condition precedence for the contract.

IMS is made up of Ghanaian security card company and the International Danish Financial Group (IDFG), under an operational name, FIMS but it appears different interest groups within officialdom are tussling to offload NIA’s responsibility to FIMS. More than GH450m has so far been blown on the project which is almost a white elephant. More soon

Source: The Republic