Vice President Dr. Mahamudu Bawumia believes digitalization is key to fighting corruption in Ghana. During a Sunday media engagement, he spoke about the benefits of the Ghana Card in improving accountability and transparency in public institutions.
Dr. Bawumia explained that the national ID card has helped identify “ghost workers” who had been stealing funds for years. “When I look at the impact of the Ghana card on the public sector payroll, it gives me a lot of confidence that we are on the right path to deal with corruption,” he said.
The Ghana Card has issued about 18 million IDs so far. It provides a unique identity verified by fingerprint. This has allowed various state organizations to clean up their payrolls.
Digitalization in Ghana’s accountability measures
“When we look at SSNIT, for example, when they reviewed their pensioner payroll to ensure everyone had a unique identity, they discovered 29,000 ghost pensioners. This saved SSNIT almost 400 million Ghana cedis thanks to the Ghana card,” Dr.
Bawumia noted. He also mentioned that the National Service Secretariat found 44,000 ghost service personnel, saving over 350 million cedis. “Using digitalization and the Ghana card, we’ve eliminated all ghost workers on the Controller and Accountant payroll.
This is a significant advancement in the fight against corruption because these practices have been around for a very long time. Still, digitalization is helping us deal with them,” the Vice President added. Dr. Bawumia, the New Patriotic Party (NPP) presidential candidate, is confident that digital tools like the Ghana Card can help curb corruption by increasing transparency and blocking leakages across public institutions.
He believes this will help direct more resources toward development in the country.
