After the free mass registration exercise, Ghana’s national identity data bank, National Identification Authority (NIA), has announced charges for Ghanaians who intend to acquire the Ghana Card.

According to the NIA, Ghanaians who have lost their cards and wish to replace them will have to pay GHS30.

Institutions that have staff above 50 and wish to have them registered en masse, will pay GHS150 per staff.

Households that also wish to have their members registered at a go will have to pay GHS150.

The Head of Corporate Affairs of NIA, Mr Abudu Abdul Ganiyu, listed the charges during an interview with Kwame Appiah Kubi, host of Accra100.5FM’s morning show Ghana Yensom on Friday, 15 October 2021.

He said people who lose their card will have to get a police extract for a replacement at a fee of GHS30.

Foreigners are to pay $150 for the Card.

Mr Ganiyu said all these fees have been approved by parliament.

He said there are 14 mandatory uses for the Ghana Card, explaining that anyone living in Ghana without one will not be able to open a bank account, buy a piece of land or get a SIM card among a raft of other activities.

It is against this background that Mr Ganiyu cautioned all Ghanaians to take good care of the cards issued to them by the NIA.

He indicated that the servers of the NIA are resilient and can handle all the synchronisation exercises ongoing with regard to the Social Security and National Trust (SSNIT) and the SIM card registration exercise directed by the National Communications Authority (NCA) among others in the country.

According to him, the NIA’s technical team, chaired by Vice-president Mahamadu Bawumia, has put measures in place to handle the synchronisation of all identity cards in the country.

The NIA, he noted, has state-of-the-art servers that can withstand pressure, adding that the Ghana Card has a 148-kb capacity with 14 outlets for the integration of other identities such as driver’s licence among others.

Already, the NIA has registered more than 15 million Ghanaians from 15 years and above and issued more than 14 million of those cards.

He assured the public that by the end of October, the NIA will be opening 291 additional offices across the country to fast-track the registration process.

Mr Ganiyu announced that the backlog of cards will be cleared once the offices are operationalised in all the districts.