Nantional Identification Authority (NIA) has indicated it preparedness to begin registration of Ghanaians outside the country onto the National Identity Register (NIR).
The Authority has designed in collaboration with the Identity Management Systems II Limited (IMS II) and officials of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Regional Integration (MoFARI) headed by the Acting Chief Director of the Ministry, Ambassador Ramses Joseph Cleland have formed a joint committee as part of the preparedness to commence the registration of Ghanaians abroad.
Sections 4(1)(a) and 7(1)(a) of the National Identification Authority (NIA) Act, 2008 (Act 750) mandate the NIA to register Ghanaian citizens resident in or outside this country onto the NIR.
The officials will be using Ghana’s mission abroad as registration centers and officers of the missions as the officials registration officers as stipulated in Sections 15 and 21 of the Act, per a post made on social media by Prof. Ken Attafuah, the NIA boss.
The NIA has since last year been working with the MoFARI to develop a roadmap for the seamless implementation of the programme. Hence the meeting chaired by Amb. Ramses was to refine the roadmap for the implementation of the diasporan registration.
Key components of the roadmap include Training of the Mission staff on the registration process, Deployment of the Mobile Registration Workstations (MRW) to the various Missions abroad,
Public Education and Publicity, End-to-end Network Configuration and testing, Pilot Registration and Launching.
NIA assured Ghanaians that further details will be provided in due course as and when approved by the NIA Governing Board, MoFARI, and NIA’s supervisory Ministry, the Ministry of the Interior.
By Vincent Kubi