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The National Identification Authority has indicated that its online registration system has not been fully integrated but assured that it will be done “very soon.”

The Head of Corporate Affairs of the Authority, Francis Palmdetti in an interview on the Citi Breakfast Show on Thursday said the system, when completed will help ease the congestion at various registration centres.

He explained that after the online application, applicants are expected to print the form which will have a barcode that when scanned at the registration centre will automatically retrieve all the information and input the data into their software system.

He noted however that the registration centres have not currently been equipped to scan and automatically get the information on the forms unto the computers.

“On our website, it is still under construction. The project requires the portal to enable people fill the forms online and there is this barcode that will be part of the printed form. The idea is that once you get to the registration centre, and the registration looks through the form with you, the MRW operator scans the barcode and the information is uploaded to the enrollment page. That cuts a lot of time and will be faster. But that component which is to enable the MRW operator scan the QR code, that part has not been integrated yet and that is why we haven’t made noise about it,” he said.

“The Executive Secretary [of the NIA] mentioned it and people started moving to the website to quickly fill the forms….it will reduce sometime because the registration officer would just go through the forms with them but the part that they’ll have the information enrolled into the system automatically will still have to add to the system [manually] But we are hoping to get that part integrated very soon and that will ease the time that we spend,” he added.

A web link for the online application for the Ghana Card has recently been in wide circulation on social media with the public being urged to use it in order to avoid the chaotic and time-consuming registration process observed at most registration centres in Accra.

But the explanation of Mr. Palmdetti indicates that one will still largely go through the existing manual procedure even after the online application.

The NIA is yet to officially announce the online application portal.