Executive Director of the National Identification Authority (NIA), Professor Ken Attafuah, has clarified that the 3.5 million Ghana cards in bonded warehouses referred to by the Finance Minister in his recent briefing to Parliament are blank cards.
Prof. Attafuah said the impression being created that the cards are those already printed is erroneous and must be disregarded.
The NIA Executive Director in an interview on the Point of View on Citi TV explained that: “claims that 3.5 million Ghanaians [have] their cards printed and not collected is not true, and I don’t know where it is coming from. I suspect it’s from Dr. Dominic Ayine when he made a statement about 3.5 million Ghanaians who are qualified to have their Ghana cards and attributing that to me, but I think it is bad arithmetic that has resulted in this error.”
He said it is “3.5 million blank cards in a bonded warehouse, cards that we have imported which don’t have biometric information printed on them. What they have done is to wrongly add the number of printed but not collected cards to the number of cards to be printed, and he then wrongly arrived at the 3.5 million figure.”
The Finance Minister, Ken Ofori-Atta on Tuesday, February 28, disclosed that an agreement had been reached with CalBank, for a GH¢100 million facility to ensure that over 3 million Ghana Cards stuck in bonded warehouses were released to the Authority.
