The Wa Municipal Director of the National Identification Authority (NIA), Mr. Khaalid Muhammad Suadik, has discounted allegations suggesting his outfit charges illegal fees before enrolling new applicants for a Ghana Card.
He said the NIA does not charge anything from applicants indicating that registration for the National Identification Card is absolutely free.
He however admitted it was possible some unscrupulous elements could be exploiting the situation to defraud unsuspecting clients given that the NIA's operations take place within the precincts of the Ghana Revenue Authority (GRA).
"If you're a Ghanaian and you're coming for a Ghana Card, you don't pay for a penny for it. But then, in every human institution, there are people that take opportunities you know we're operating from the Ghana Revenue Authority (GRA) premises and so, you can meet somebody outside who doesn't even work in GRA. The person can pretend that oh, I know someone in GRA and because I know this person you can do this I'll go and talk to them and they'll assist you".
"I can tell you on authority without a shred of doubt that none of my officers, four officers has ever or is even prepared to compromise his stand for issuance of card and...(new enrollments)," Mr. Khaalid indicated.
Explaining further, he outlined the identifiable charges which are service charges for those seeking to update information on their card or for the replacement of a damaged card the payment of which, he said, have even been temporarily suspended pending further directives.
He stated, "The service we charge here which has not even commenced is, when you are coming to do an update of your information on your card, you are supposed to pay a service charge of GH₵30.00, if you're coming for replacement of your damaged card, you pay an amount of GH₵30.00 but all those services have been suspended for now."
He added that the national headquarters of the NIA was in the process of finalizing measures to determine the modalities of payments where service charge is applicable and that until that is done, no amount of money was being collected at any of the offices across the 11 districts of the Upper West Region including Wa Municipal where he is the Director.
Mr. Khaalid Muhammad Suadik made these remarks in an interview with our Upper West Regional correspondent, Ilyaas Al-Hasan, in response to some alleged illegal charges by the outfit Thursday, December 16, 2021.
Mr. Khaalid disclosed that the outfit was currently operating above capacity partly due to the backlog of cards locked up in the offices of the NIA occasioned by the break-in operations sometime back.
According to him, because many have come to the realization the Ghana Card is a requirement for the acquisition of other National Identification Cards in order to access health care, do bank or mobile money transactions, the craving for the Ghana Card has shot up tremendously particularly also among government workers who are eager to obtain one to safeguard their salaries.
He said due to the sheer numbers trooping to the office, the outfit has dedicated different days for the enrollments and issuance of cards. According to him, whereas they manage to do 30 enrollments of clients a day, they are also able to issue 84 cards over the same period to their owners.
On some challenges confronting the outfit, the Municipal NIA Director singled out lack of space to accommodate enough clients as their major challenge.
He said as an infant institution that has just been centralized, the authority cannot yet boast of enough space to host all its clients at a go and therefore often had to resort to rationalizing the accommodation of clients into the office space to avoid flouting the Covid-19 protocols.
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