<<Print>>

THE MEMBER of Parliament for Manhyia, Dr. Matthew Opoku Prempeh has called on Parliament to summon the National Identification Authority (NIA) to appear before the House�s Special Budget Committee to explain why it has not been able to carry out its mandate. Although NIA had been mandated to collect personal and biometric data of both Ghanaians as well as foreigners living in the country for the issuance of national identification cards, it had not been able to do so, as even MPs had not been issued with their ID cards almost a year after their data were collected. Presenting a statement on the topic, �Parliament must come to the rescue of the National Identification Authority�, Dr. Prempeh said the appearance of the Authority would give it the opportunity to present its roadmap and the budget it would need to complete registration of all Ghanaians, both local and abroad as well as foreigners living in Ghana. Contributing to the statement, MP for Aburi/Nsawam, O.B. Amoah and other members of the House strongly supported Dr. Prempeh�s call, asking Parliament to take a more serious look at NIA, which was an important national institution and help it fulfill the mandate that Parliament had defined for it. According to Dr. Prempeh, although the NIA was supposed to have completed in March 2009, the collection of data for the entire country for the national register, the Authority was still struggling to cover the entire country. �We even hear that the Authority does not even have resources to distribute ID cards it has struggled to print. This is not acceptable,� he queried. Data collection for the creation of the national civil register, Dr. Prempeh pointed out, began in 2008 in the Central Region and continued through the Western, Eastern, Volta and Greater Accra and Ashanti regions. The Authority was said to be currently collecting information in the Brong Ahafo Region at a slow pace. The Manhyia MP said the inability of the NIA to complete its data collection had led to the emergence of data collection activities by other user agencies that were mandated by law to access information in the national database. Stressing that supporting the NIA was a national imperative, Dr. Prempeh noted, �Government has already invested several millions of dollars in acquiring a world class Automated Fingerprint Identification system (AFIS) that has an efficient duplication elimination system�, adding, �Should the NIA complete national coverage, it will be in a better position to support other user agencies such as the National Health Insurance Authority, the Passport Office, the DVLA, Electoral Commission, SSNIT, National Security, etc. to undertake more effective identity management�. Severe underfunding of the NIA, he observed, has led to more calls on the public budget by all these user agencies that are creating their own smaller databases. �This is complete waste of public resources�, Dr. Prempeh bemoaned, fearing �there is a risk that all these smaller databases may not be able to communicate with the National Data Centre leading to further waste�. He pointed out that without a functioning national database, smaller databases could not cross-reference their data and would contain high ratios of duplication.