Mustapha Ussif introducing the Card system to control the crowd
The Executive Director of the National Service Scheme (NSS), Mustapha Ussif, on Monday, visited some registration centres in Accra to assess the progress of the exercise which began this week.
In line with its mandate to deploy personnel to various sectors of the country’s economy, management of the NSS last month announced that it had deployed 96,871 personnel for the 2017/18 service year.
Greater Accra Region had 29,647 personnel.
The registration of the personnel commenced yesterday throughout the country and is expected to end after 30 days.
The Executive Director, who was accompanied by his deputy and other directors, visited the centre at the Regional Coordinating Council (RCC) and others in the La Dade Kotopon Municipality.
Addressing journalists after the visit, Mr. Ussif expressed satisfaction with the progress of the registration.
According to him, although there were many personnel to be registered each day, he was hopeful they would all be registered.
“It is gratifying to note that the huge numbers waiting in a queue to be registered, however, I will have wished they calm down to avoid such frightening queues,” he stated.
Giving reasons for using manual registration process as against online registration, the Chief Executive explained that the move was to avoid impersonations (ghost names).
“To avoid impersonation or any unforeseen possibilities of attempt to compromise the process, all prospective service personnel would be required to provide their Students’ Identification Cards, valid Ghanaian passports or Voters’ IDs or drivers’ licenses during the registration period,” he remarked.
At the Military Police (MP) centre, a number of anxious personnel averred that they were scared of the presence of the MP who controlled the crowd.
However, the MP on guard indicated that they must apply reasonable force to avoid stampede and the destruction of property.
By Solomon Ofori