The Executive Director of IMANI Ghana, Franklin Cudjoe, has rejected comments by the National Identification Authority (NIA) claiming they don�t have funds to support their operations, insisting that the level �poverty� there is self -imposed.
He said until the Authority accounts for the GHC12 million used for the first national identification exercise, government should not give NIA any money for further use.
At a press briefing on Tuesday, the Board Chairman of the NIA, Larry Adjetey, said the authority is �poverty stricken.�
He justified his description saying, the Authority receives a meager budgetary allocation of about GHC700,000, which is insufficient for the enormous task of having to provide a credible identification data for Ghanaians,
The Authority has recently come under widespread condemnation initiating a move to borrow $115 million to fund new GhanaCards and to run the institution well.
On Eyewitness News on Tuesday, Franklin Cudjoe maintained that the �NIA needs to account for the money they used first. Anybody who is going to ask for money from anybody would have to have accounted for what was received earlier and they�ve not done that.�
He alleged that the management at the NIA began scheming to get more funds after it registered citizens in seven regions and had to commence the registration of Ghanaians in the three remaining regions.
�Seven regions were covered, ID cards were done, kept and stored and wasted. Three regions were supposed to be completed and that is when the scheming and the scamming began,� he said.
Mr. Cudjoe questioned the insistence of the NIA to contract a foreign loan when technologists in the country are convinced that the project could be done for a lesser price.
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