Let's Make the Ghana Card a Success

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For several years, Ghanaians have not been provided with one common national identity card which is acceptable in all business dealings or transactions in the country.

In the absence of such an ID card, various forms of identification have been used. These include the driver's licence, birth certificate, passport, voter's ID card and even student's ID card.

Many of these ID cards can easily be compromised. For this reason, it is always difficult to accept them - especially with regard to banking and other transactions.

The situation has made it difficult to genuinely identify Ghanaians from non-Ghanaians, calling for the need to sanitise the system and make our national identity cards authentic.

This explains why the whole nation, through the National Identification Authority, has decided to come out with a national identification card, known as the Ghana Card for its citizens.

Non-citizens will also be issued with another identity card to reflect their status as foreigners resident in Ghana.

The Ghanaian Times is of the firm belief that the Ghana Card will bring with it a number of benefits. First of all, it will help the country to genuinely identify Ghanaians from non-Ghanaians. Second, the card will facilitate business transactions in various sectors of the economy.

Third, it will also help us with a single identification card system, not the multi-type system which poses a problem with regard to their genuineness.

Even though this is a laudable idea, it has emerged that some parliamentarians are against the non-inclusion of the voter's identity card to be used to testify the identity of a Ghanaian.

This argument is untenable for the simple reason that some foreigners or non-Ghanaians also have it. This is an undeniable fact.

This issue was debated in Parliament and at the end of it all, both the Majority and the Minority came to a conclusion that to be able to register for the Ghana Card, Ghanaians will have to provide their passport or birth certificate.

If none of these is available, then two registered Ghanaian citizens can testify within the residential area, of a person that indeed the person concerned is indeed a Ghanaian.

It is, therefore, difficult to understand the position adopted by the Minority in Parliament that they will boycott the registration of the Ghana Card unless the voter's ID is admitted as one of the forms of identification needed to register for the Card.

Is this position, untenable as it is, being used to turn back the clock of progress in the country?

Certain matters are not to be joked with under any circumstance and one of them is the issuance of the genuine national identity cards for Ghanaians. Indeed, this matter should not be treated as a joke.

Rather, it should be treated as a serious matter in a manner that will be used to entice the support of all Ghanaians in the country.

We all need to support what is good and/or is worthy of emulation so that together we can help move our dear nation forward.

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