Bawumia says his “Ghana Card over 1000 interchanges” statement was misinterpreted
Dr. Mahamudu Bawumia, the vice president, has admitted that his contentious claim that he preferred the Ghana card to physical infrastructure was misunderstood.
Even though infrastructure aids in a nation’s development, he claimed that IT solutions like the Ghana card could prevent the nation from losing enormous sums of money due to ghost names at public institutions.
Dr. Bawumia used his speech at the Accra Civil Service Awards Night in 2021 to defend his earlier statement that he preferred the Ghana Card over 1,000 interchanges.
He argued that the issue of phantom names on the government payroll could be resolved with a better identification mechanism.
“It seems my Ghana card statement was misinterpreted. I want people to think about it critically. For the first time in our history, we have a unique identity system which is biometric, and so we can identify individuals.”
“With this, the case of ghost names on our public sector system will become a thing of the past.”
The Vice President claimed that 14,000 ghost names on the NSS and around 27,000 ghost pensions were found on SSNIT.
“14,000 ghost names were recently found at the National Service because there was no unique identity. Just a couple of days ago, SSNIT found 27,000 ghost names, and they were being paid GH¢327 million. Just these two institutions have cost us over GH¢400 million.”
On Thursday, July 14, 2022, during the introduction of two new, highly regarded information technology programs at Accra Business School, the Vice President declared that he would prefer the Ghana card over 1,000 interchanges since it has a bigger impact.
Source: Pulse.com.gh