The National Identification Authority (NIA) says plans are far advanced to get office spaces in regions and districts to allow Ghanaians to register for their cards after the end of the mass registration exercise.
The registration exercise which is currently ongoing in the Central, Western and Western North Regions is expected to end in March 2020 in the Eastern Region.
Head of Corporate Affairs at NIA, ACI Francis Palmdeti said the mop-up registration in the yet to be established at the districts will be done at no cost to applicants.
“When we go to the new regions, we meet with the District and Municipal executives and some of the discussions we have with them is the issue of office space for our district offices. The discussions are ongoing and so we don’t anticipate any challenge with where to site our district offices.
“We are not resting on our laurels. What we will be doing immediately after March is to have district offices where registration will continue for all those who were not able to register during the mass registration.”
Farmers top list of applicants
Data gathered from the ongoing Ghana card mass registration by the National Identification Authority (NIA) shows that farmers come first if registrants are categorized based on occupation.
So far, 8.5 million (8,512,320) Ghanaians have registered for the Ghana Card as of February 8, 2020.
According to the data, 1.4 million (1,484,331) farmers have so far registered as of the above data, making them the highest occupation.
In the second position are students, with 1.3 million (1,302,612) of them registering for the Ghana Card so far.
791,760 Retail market traders
The third-highest category of people that have registered for the card is retail market traders, who numbered 791,760.
NIA commenced the Ghana Card registration exercise in April 2019 on Monday, January 27, 2020.
Some Ghanaians who visited the various registration centres to take part in the process had their hopes dashed following logistical challenges.
NIA had registered over 7.2 million people as of January 16, 2020.
The NIA has so far covered 12 out of the 16 regions in Ghana.
