Prof. Ken Attafuah
THE NATIONAL Identification Authority (NIA) is insisting that the cost of the controversial Ghana Card Project is $124 million and not the $1.2 billion being quoted by the Minority National Democratic Congress (NDC).
This follows recent media reports in which the Minority Leader in Parliament, Haruna Iddrisu is said to have accused the Authority of bloating the cost.
The media reports had also cited the Minority Leader calling for a forensic audit into the activities of NIA.
But a statement signed by its Head of Corporate Affairs, ACI Francis Palmdeti, said “the NIA wishes to once again reiterate its earlier position on the subject and categorically deny that the project cost is bloated.”
It said “specifically, the NIA states that: the National Identification System project contract is being executed under a public private partnership agreement between NIA and Identity Management System (IMS), a subsidiary of Margins Group of Companies.”
It said “the cost of the project is jointly shared by the parties. NIA’s component of the contract sum is $124 million which caters for operations in both Ghana and abroad to register and issue smart biometric, chip-embedded ID cards to all Ghanaians aged 15 years and over and 2 dimensional bar-code cards to all Ghanaians under 15 years.”
BY Melvin Tarlue