Dr. Bawumia diffuses propaganda of comparing Ghana Card to Interchanges

Vice President of Ghana Dr. Mahamudu Bawumia has mounted a spirited defense in support of his recent claim that, he will choose the Ghana card over 1,000 interchanges.

“Some of the problems go back to independence. We inherited a problem of no unique national identification system. This has been with us since independence. We had implemented a national identification system for the Ghana card. Today, we have 16 million Ghanaians with unique identities, and that is a major transformation. A lot of people sometimes do not appreciate its impact.”

“If you gave me 1000 interchanges and the Ghana card, I would choose the Ghana card because it has more impact,” he added.

The Vice President came under attack, especially from the opposition National Democratic Congress (NDC) over the comment.

Speaking about the issue for the first time and throwing more light, the Vice President indicated that he has noted the reactions that greeted his choice of Ghana Card over a thousand interchanges in the country.

However, he has made a spirited argument to back his position.

Dr. Mahamudu Bawumia indicated that “a few weeks ago, not too long I was touting Ghana card and the identification system that we have put in place in Ghana. For me,m at this stage of our development I will prefer the Ghana card to 1000 interchanges. You can imagine the furore this caused. Some said is this mad? What is the Ghana Card, what’s the system? How can it be so much valuable?

I will give a few reasons and it wasn’t said cavalierly, there was thinking to the statement and I wanted people to think about it. For the first time in our history as a country we have a unique identification system which is biometric so we can uniquely identify every individual whether they are alive or dead," Dr. Bawumia said.

Immediately if you can easily identify each individual the case of ghost names on our payroll will become a thing of the past. I’m working with the controller here and we are doing a lot of work on the controller payroll and cleaning it up," the Vice President explained.

He continued, "If you look at what has happened recently, National Service Scheme we found 14,000 ghost names and this saved the country. Just a couple of days ago SSNIT reported that it took 27,000 ghost names from its system. They were being paid GH¢327 million a year. In two Institutions where these discoveries have been made GH¢441 million has been saved. Over ten years we are talking over GH¢4 billion. If we go through other Institutions we will be able to eliminate all ghost workers thanks to the Ghana card.”

The Vice President further indicated that currently, the Ghana Card is now the Tax Identification Number and that will help in the collection of taxes in the country.